Minutes of the 32nd meeting of the Scala Center, Q1 2024
Minutes are archived on the Scala Center website.
Summary
The following agenda was distributed to attendees: agenda.
We were joined by two new board members, Dmitrii Naumenko (JetBrains) and Zainab Ali (community representative).
Center activities for the past quarter focused on pipelined compilation (Scala 3), TASTy Reader (Scala 2), Scala.js minifier (2 and 3), WebAssembly backend for Scala.js (2 and 3), Metals debugger (2 and 3), presentation compiler (3), sbt 2.x (2 and 3), the Scala Ambassadors initiative, Google Summer of Code, conferences (Scala.IO and Scalar), compiler sprees, combating Scala website scammers, and fundraising.
Details are below and in the Center’s activity report:
No new proposals were received this quarter.
Other topics covered included Scala Days community discussions around “lean Scala” and “direct style” and related concepts, Scala LTS vs. Scala Next, the Scala Native 0.5 upgrade, and more.
Date, Time and Location
The meeting took place virtually on Friday, April 25, 2024 at 15:00 (UTC).
Minutes were taken by Seth Tisue (secretary).
Attendees
Officers:
- Chris Kipp (chairperson)
- Darja Jovanovic (executive director), EPFL
- Sébastien Doeraene (interim technical director), EPFL
- Martin Odersky (technical advisor), EPFL
- Seth Tisue (secretary), Lightbend
Board members:
- Zainab Ali, community representative
- Krzysztof Borowski, VirtusLab
- Dmitrii Naumenko, JetBrains
- Lukas Rytz, Lightbend
- Daniela Sfregola, Morgan Stanley
- Eugene Yokota, community representative
Apologies:
- Michel Davit, Spotify
Introduction
Our two new board members introduced themselves.
Dmitrii Naumenko will represent JetBrains, who have just finished joining the board. Dmitrii is the leader of the IntelliJ Scala plugin team there.
Zainab Ali is a new community representative, serving alongside Eugene Yokota. She has been organizing the London Scala Users Group for the last five years or so. She describes herself as a functional Scala developer who does training in the functional space.
Technical report
Seb, as interim technical director, summarized Scala Center activities since the last meeting. His remarks were based on the Center’s more detailed Q1 quarterly activity report:
And the Center’s Q2 roadmap:
The following notes do not repeat the contents of the report and roadmap, but only supplement them.
(No questions were asked about Seb’s updates, so there are no further notes here.)
Management and financial report
Darja presented this section.
In February, the Center published their 2024 roadmap.
The Center published two blog posts about scammers targeting Scala users:
- https://scala-lang.org/blog/2024/03/01/fake-scala-courses.html
- https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2024/03/18/scam-response.html
Combating these scams consumed considerable time and effort, but the good news is that the scamming activity did stop.
At the Scalar conference in Warsaw, the Center organized a meeting of conference and meetup organizers and also launched the new Scala Ambassadors program.
The Center’s participation in Google Summer of Code for 2024 is moving ahead.
The Center’s moderation team met in person in Lausanne to share knowledge and experiences and to discuss and strategize.
The Center’s governance project made progress which Darja summarized. That work was eventually completed later in the year, as described in this October 2024 blog post:
- https://www.scala-lang.org/news/new-governance.html
Several engineers completed their time at the Center and moved on: Anatolii Kmetiuk, Jamie Thompson, and Jedrzej Rochala. Seb will be teaching part-time at EPFL, so his effort level at the Center will be reduced to 50%. Hiring new engineers would require new funding.
The Center’s 2024 roadmap reflects the smaller size of the engineering team. Center staff will travel less unless the travel is sponsored. The Center will continue to “support, empower, and amplify” active Scala communities and community members to accomplish things that the Center itself cannot.
The Center continues to collect income from its MOOCs, but the amount continues to gradually decline.
Fundraising efforts are ongoing. Multiple leads are being pursued.
The effort to revive Scala Days for 2025 is ongoing. In the meantime, the Scala website’s events page is kept up to date with upcoming events.
Scala 2 report
This was presented by Lukas.
Since the last meeting, Scala 2.12.19 and 2.13.13 were released,
and 2.13.14 is almost ready. The 2.13.14 cycle was short because
of a few regressions. 2.13.14 introduces -Xsource-features.
Lukas contributed an sbt PR, now merged, which aligns sbt with SIP-51, which will allow the Scala 2.13 standard library (which is also used by Scala 3) to make additions again. A process for that will need to be set up.
Community report
This section was led by Eugene and Zainab.
They said that in the community there is a great deal of discussion, some confusion and uncertainty, and even some tension around the following complex of issues and developments: effect systems, the advent of Project Loom, the concept of “direct style”, and Martin’s blog post about “lean Scala”. Discussion involving nearly the entire board ensued.
Eugene said there was also some confusion in the community about Scala LTS vs Scala Next. As will be described in the next minutes, Zainab later submitted a proposal asking the Center to provide clearer public guidance on this, and that proposal was completed by the publication of this new page.
Zainab praised the organizers gathering at Scalar in Warsaw in March, which was “useful” in strengthening networking between conference and meetup organizers. In London they are hoping to do even more events besides just talks, such as workshops, open-source sprees, and katas. She also expressed hope that the Center’s new Scala Ambassadors initiative will help onboard people who want to get more involved with community.
Zainab mentioned that pushing the Scala Native 0.4 to 0.5 upgrade through the open source ecosystem has been difficult. In response, Seb recalled when Scala.js went from 0.6 to 1.0, a transition he described as “difficult and long”, yet necessary. Scala Native 0.4 was 3 to 4 years ago, so the big jump to 0.5 is now “unfortunately necessary”, but the Native team “very much hopes” that this is “the last one before 1.0”, which is probably “a few years down the line”. Eugene added that setting up a Scala.js or Scala Native community build, like the existing JVM-centric Scala 2 and Scala 3 community builds, could really help (if resources could be found for such an effort). Seth added that library maintainers shouldn’t be shy about requesting help from Scala Native enthusiasts, rather than feeling obligated to sort out problems themselves.
Conclusion
Darja intends to organize an in-person advisory board meeting to be held at EPFL in the fall. Everyone on the board indicated they would make an effort to attend. (The in-person meeting did in fact occur, in September, and it will be covered in the next minutes.)