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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +layout: contact |
| 3 | +--- |
| 4 | + |
| 5 | +# Minutes of the 34th meeting of the Scala Center, Q4 2024 |
| 6 | + |
| 7 | +Minutes are [archived](https://scala.epfl.ch/records.html) on the |
| 8 | +Scala Center website. |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +## Summary |
| 11 | + |
| 12 | +The following agenda was distributed to attendees: |
| 13 | +[agenda](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/agendas/034-2024-q4.md). |
| 14 | + |
| 15 | +Center activities for the past quarter focused on Scala 3 maintenance, |
| 16 | +the Scala 3 language specification, Scala.js maintenance, the Scala |
| 17 | +Improvement Process, sbt 2, the new Scala Highlights newsletter, |
| 18 | +Google of Summer Code, Scala Advent of Code, compiler sprees, Scala |
| 19 | +Days, and fundraising. |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +Details are below and in the Center's activity report: |
| 22 | + |
| 23 | +* [report](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2024-Q4-activity-report.html) |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +One new proposal was received this quarter: |
| 26 | + |
| 27 | +* [SCP-034](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/proposals/034-artifact-publishing.md): Artifact publishing |
| 28 | + |
| 29 | +After discussion, the board decided to postpone any formal vote on it. |
| 30 | + |
| 31 | +Other topics covered included officer elections; officers remained |
| 32 | +unchanged. |
| 33 | + |
| 34 | +## Date, Time and Location |
| 35 | + |
| 36 | +The meeting took place virtually on Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at |
| 37 | +16:15 (UTC). |
| 38 | + |
| 39 | +Minutes were taken by Seth Tisue (secretary). |
| 40 | + |
| 41 | +## Attendees |
| 42 | + |
| 43 | +The company formerly known as Lightbend is now called Akka. Lukas |
| 44 | +Rytz is still the Akka representative, but he was unavailable for this |
| 45 | +meeting so Seth filled in. |
| 46 | + |
| 47 | +Officers: |
| 48 | + |
| 49 | +* Chris Kipp (chairperson), community |
| 50 | +* Darja Jovanovic (executive director), EPFL |
| 51 | +* Sébastien Doeraene (interim technical director), EPFL |
| 52 | +* Martin Odersky (technical advisor), EPFL |
| 53 | +* Seth Tisue (secretary), Akka |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | +Board members: |
| 56 | + |
| 57 | +* Zainab Ali, community representative |
| 58 | +* Krzysztof Romanowski, VirtusLab (substituting for Krzysztof Borowski) |
| 59 | +* Dmitrii Naumenko, JetBrains |
| 60 | +* Seth Tisue, Akka (substituting for Lukas Rytz) |
| 61 | +* Eugene Yokota, community representative |
| 62 | + |
| 63 | +Apologies: |
| 64 | + |
| 65 | +* Daniela Sfregola, Morgan Stanley |
| 66 | + |
| 67 | +## Technical report |
| 68 | + |
| 69 | +Séb, as interim technical director, summarized Scala Center activities |
| 70 | +since the last meeting. His remarks were based on the Center's more |
| 71 | +detailed Q4 quarterly activity report: |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +* [report](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2024-Q4-activity-report.html) |
| 74 | + |
| 75 | +And the Center's 2025 Q1 roadmap: |
| 76 | + |
| 77 | +* [roadmap](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2025-Q1-roadmap.html) |
| 78 | + |
| 79 | +The following notes do not repeat the contents of the report and |
| 80 | +roadmap, but only supplement them. |
| 81 | + |
| 82 | +Séb noted that at its current staffing level the Center is currently |
| 83 | +doing at least as much organizing and community work as technical |
| 84 | +work. |
| 85 | + |
| 86 | +A board member asked where Scala.js's WebAssembly back end stands. |
| 87 | +Séb said that optimizing the back end is still pending. Closures in |
| 88 | +particular are not optimized yet. Martin added that stable exceptions |
| 89 | +support in WebAssembly in browsers is another pending issue preventing |
| 90 | +the Center's work on this from being quite ready yet for use in common |
| 91 | +scenarios. |
| 92 | + |
| 93 | +There was some technical discussion about how the Scala 3 debugger |
| 94 | +would be packaged to be consumed by IntelliJ and other tools. Also, |
| 95 | +an officer asked about the debugger code moving into the main Scala 3 |
| 96 | +repo; does that mean that fixes require a new language release? Séb |
| 97 | +said yes, but that code is now stable enough now for it to be worth |
| 98 | +it. |
| 99 | + |
| 100 | +## Scala 2 report |
| 101 | + |
| 102 | +This was presented by Seth. |
| 103 | + |
| 104 | +Scala Newsletter is out today, and covers both Scala 3 and Scala 2. |
| 105 | +Let us know what you think, as this will be the template for future |
| 106 | +issues, which will be published quarterly. |
| 107 | + |
| 108 | +Since the last meeting, we published a blog post about our Scala 2 |
| 109 | +maintenance plans. Note that 2.12 is now under minimal maintenance. |
| 110 | + |
| 111 | +Scala 2.13.15 and 2.13.16 came out since the last meeting. Changes |
| 112 | +were modest and focused on compatibility, on supporting Scala 3 |
| 113 | +migration, and on improvements to warnings and linting. There have |
| 114 | +been no 2.13.16 regression reports, so if anyone was holding back on |
| 115 | +upgrading, I'd say go ahead. |
| 116 | + |
| 117 | +As usual, we've opened threads on the Contributors forum for |
| 118 | +discussing plans for the next releases: |
| 119 | + |
| 120 | +* [2.13.17](https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-2-13-17-release-planning/6994) |
| 121 | +* [2.12.21](https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-2-12-21-release-planning/6753) |
| 122 | + |
| 123 | +We plan for |
| 124 | +[SIP-51](https://docs.scala-lang.org/sips/drop-stdlib-forwards-bin-compat.html) |
| 125 | +(resuming making additions to the standard library) to be a theme |
| 126 | +for 2.13.17. |
| 127 | + |
| 128 | +An officer asked: if the primary motivation for maintaining 2.12 is sbt 1, |
| 129 | +does that mean that when sbt 2 comes out, 2.12 be EOLed? Seth |
| 130 | +responded: perhaps eventually, but not right away. We are assuming a |
| 131 | +longer timeframe since sbt 1 will remain in wide use for some time yet |
| 132 | +to come, even once sbt 2 is available. |
| 133 | + |
| 134 | +## SCP-034: Artifact publishing |
| 135 | + |
| 136 | +Eugene summarized [the |
| 137 | +proposal](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/proposals/034-artifact-publishing.md). |
| 138 | + |
| 139 | +Séb expressed support; "it seems like a sensible thing to do". One |
| 140 | +board member wondered if maintainers would be sufficiently motivated |
| 141 | +to migrate to a shared implementation. Another member asked if there's |
| 142 | +a particular current implementation that would be the basis of the |
| 143 | +shared one; there was no simple, single answer. |
| 144 | + |
| 145 | +The rest of the discussion centered on whether the Center would have |
| 146 | +enough engineering resources this year to lead this. In the end, the |
| 147 | +board decided not to formally vote on it now, but revisit the proposal |
| 148 | +later. Chris suggested that Eugene amend the proposal to reflect |
| 149 | +today's discussion. |
| 150 | + |
| 151 | +## Elections |
| 152 | + |
| 153 | +For chairperson, Chris Kipp indicated his willingness to continue as |
| 154 | +chair and was elected unanimously. (Chairs are not required to serve |
| 155 | +past one year, but a willing chair is welcome to serve for longer.) |
| 156 | + |
| 157 | +Also re-elected without any other nominations being made were Martin |
| 158 | +Odersky (technical advisor) and Seth Tisue (secretary). |
| 159 | + |
| 160 | +## Community report |
| 161 | + |
| 162 | +This section was led by Zainab and Eugene. |
| 163 | + |
| 164 | +Zainab said the London community is currently strong, with more events |
| 165 | +occurring, with attendance up as well. The London Scala group is now |
| 166 | +doing open-source hack days and women-in-Scala meetings, in addition |
| 167 | +to the usual meetups with speakers. ScalaBridge has received feedback |
| 168 | +that it could devote more time to setup and tooling, as that usually |
| 169 | +causes participants more trouble than the language itself. |
| 170 | + |
| 171 | +Eugene noted that X (aka Twitter) is no longer as universal a source |
| 172 | +of news and discussion; some users remain but others have dispersed to |
| 173 | +Bluesky and/or Mastodon. He said that as a result, the Scala Reddit is |
| 174 | +even more important to the community than before, and the discussions |
| 175 | +and engagement there have been strong recently (including topics about |
| 176 | +education and training). |
| 177 | + |
| 178 | +He also observed that there have been several extremely active |
| 179 | +language design discussions recently, such as the one about collection |
| 180 | +literals. There was some discussion among the board about how these |
| 181 | +proposals and discussions can best be framed and structured, to |
| 182 | +encourage high quality engagement and ensure that people feel heard. |
| 183 | + |
| 184 | +There was some also some discussion on how to better coordinate |
| 185 | +language changes with tooling maintainers, including the recent |
| 186 | +introduction of the concept of "preview" features as an intermediate |
| 187 | +state between "experimental" and completed. |
| 188 | + |
| 189 | +One board member expressed a wish for Scala people (perhaps even |
| 190 | +Center members) to more present at non-Scala conferences, representing |
| 191 | +Scala outside of our own community. |
| 192 | + |
| 193 | +There was some discussion around how having a smaller engineering |
| 194 | +staff may change community perception of the Center. There was general |
| 195 | +agreement that our publicity should focus on what advances are |
| 196 | +happening and not too much on exactly where they happened (except, of |
| 197 | +course, to give credit where credit is due!). That's part of the idea |
| 198 | +behind the new Scala Highlights newsletter, which is assembled by the |
| 199 | +Center, but isn't restricted to presenting the Center's own |
| 200 | +activities. |
| 201 | + |
| 202 | +## Management and financial report |
| 203 | + |
| 204 | +Darja said that a major piece of news since the last meeting was the |
| 205 | +publication in October of the new Scala governance and "development |
| 206 | +guarantees" documents, as described in [this blog |
| 207 | +post](https://www.scala-lang.org/news/new-governance.html). |
| 208 | + |
| 209 | +Also very important, the publication of the first issue of [Scala |
| 210 | +Highlights](https://www.scala-lang.org/highlights/2025/02/06/highlights-2024.html). |
| 211 | +The first issue covers all of 2024; future issues will have quarterly |
| 212 | +news. |
| 213 | + |
| 214 | +The Center's finances have improved thanks to one-time donations and |
| 215 | +assistance from several sources. Regardless, hiring additional staff |
| 216 | +would require additional funding. Fundraising efforts are ongoing. |
| 217 | + |
| 218 | +The Center is also still in the process of reviving Scala Days for |
| 219 | +later in 2025. (Later, after the meeting, plans were finalized and |
| 220 | +[August 2025 dates were announced](https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2025/02/18/announcing-scala-days-2025.html).) |
| 221 | + |
| 222 | +## Conclusion |
| 223 | + |
| 224 | +The next meeting will be held online, probably in April. If possible, |
| 225 | +a late-summer or fall meeting will be held in-person at EPFL. |
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