Scala Meeting report, 2010-03-09

Anthony & Co.,

Thanks for the update.

One thing (and this goes to the numbering discussion that we've had a number of times), please do not add features to a dot-dot release.  dot-dot releases are commonly (universally?) understood to just be bug fixes.  Scheduling new features for 2.8.1 perpetuates a suboptimal numbering pattern.  Please either schedule these features for > 2.8 (sometime after 2.8), or 2.8+1 (the new-feature release after 2.8), but not for 2.8.1.

Thanks,

David

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 10:16 AM, Antonio Cunei <antonio.cunei@epfl.ch> wrote:

We are currently publishing a summary of each of the weekly meetings of the Scala Core Team.

This information is made available as a service to the community. It is by necessity rather brief and gives only a rough approximation of the main points of discussions explored during each meeting; it should not be taken as a source of reliable information, nor as a record of concrete or firm decisions, nor as anything other than a record of a simple discussion.

The summary that follows is primarily intended for Scala contributors and maintainers. If you are not a contributor to the Scala system, the information below is unlikely to be very useful to you, and you might lack some of the necessary background to make sense of all the discussion items.

We do not have enough people on the team to be able to write a more complete record, and we might also not have the resources to discuss every point in detail afterwards. Nevertheless, we hope that this record, cursory as it is, is better than nothing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Scala Meeting 2010-03-09

Starts at 16h00 Scala Time (GMT+1).

People attending the meeting: Hubert, Tiark, Alex, Philipp, Gilles, Lukas, Adriaan, Iulian, Martin.

* Current work
 - Fixed many tickes
 - Checked in immutable map, while-typing
 - Actors improvements
 - Specialization bug fixes
 - Reflection library
 - Polymorphic effects, msil fixing
 - Bugfixing on build manager
 - Dependent method types
 - Optimized parallel arrays, docs

* 2.8.x review
 - continuations:
     can be moved to trunk by the end of the week for 2.8
 - immutable maps:
     maps mostly ok, sets will follow for 2.8
 - vector concatenation:
     probably 2.8.1
 - parallel arrays and vectors:
     will be committed to trunk after 2.8
 - update specification:
     no progress at this time, no blocker for the RC
 - dependent method types:
     might be in 2.8 or 2.8.1 (most likely), it's experimental anyway
 - implementation of new equality:
     maybe done? Paul please confirm
 - scaladoc:
     under control. Current version has no showstoppers for 2.8.0
 - specialize function and tuple types
     basically done
 - actors cleanups:
     pretty much done, ready for 2.8
 - join-style actors:
     improved, less boilerplate, needs more testing, aiming at 2.8.1
 - updated specification for self-types:
     pending
 - small additions to build manager:
     basically done

RC planned in two weeks (March 23), we will solve tickets in the meantime.

* FatalError has no stack trace?
 - We'll change FatalError so that it is not ControlThrowable anymore.

* scala.dbc
 - Currently unsupported, we will move to deprecate it. Good user-developed alternatives are now available (Squeryl, ScalaQuery, etc)

--
Lift, the simply functional web framework http://liftweb.net
Beginning Scala http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219890
Follow me: http://twitter.com/dpp
Surf the harmonics

Great to hear about the new immutable Map. Enhancement #575757 as well as bugs #1610 and #2588 are ok, according to my tests. This was a rather brief search too. I'm almost sure there are other defects related to Map that I haven't found in it.

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 3:16 PM, Antonio Cunei <antonio.cunei@epfl.ch> wrote:

We are currently publishing a summary of each of the weekly meetings of the Scala Core Team.

This information is made available as a service to the community. It is by necessity rather brief and gives only a rough approximation of the main points of discussions explored during each meeting; it should not be taken as a source of reliable information, nor as a record of concrete or firm decisions, nor as anything other than a record of a simple discussion.

The summary that follows is primarily intended for Scala contributors and maintainers. If you are not a contributor to the Scala system, the information below is unlikely to be very useful to you, and you might lack some of the necessary background to make sense of all the discussion items.

We do not have enough people on the team to be able to write a more complete record, and we might also not have the resources to discuss every point in detail afterwards. Nevertheless, we hope that this record, cursory as it is, is better than nothing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Scala Meeting 2010-03-09

Starts at 16h00 Scala Time (GMT+1).

People attending the meeting: Hubert, Tiark, Alex, Philipp, Gilles, Lukas, Adriaan, Iulian, Martin.

* Current work
 - Fixed many tickes
 - Checked in immutable map, while-typing
 - Actors improvements
 - Specialization bug fixes
 - Reflection library
 - Polymorphic effects, msil fixing
 - Bugfixing on build manager
 - Dependent method types
 - Optimized parallel arrays, docs

* 2.8.x review
 - continuations:
     can be moved to trunk by the end of the week for 2.8
 - immutable maps:
     maps mostly ok, sets will follow for 2.8
 - vector concatenation:
     probably 2.8.1
 - parallel arrays and vectors:
     will be committed to trunk after 2.8
 - update specification:
     no progress at this time, no blocker for the RC
 - dependent method types:
     might be in 2.8 or 2.8.1 (most likely), it's experimental anyway
 - implementation of new equality:
     maybe done? Paul please confirm
 - scaladoc:
     under control. Current version has no showstoppers for 2.8.0
 - specialize function and tuple types
     basically done
 - actors cleanups:
     pretty much done, ready for 2.8
 - join-style actors:
     improved, less boilerplate, needs more testing, aiming at 2.8.1
 - updated specification for self-types:
     pending
 - small additions to build manager:
     basically done

RC planned in two weeks (March 23), we will solve tickets in the meantime.

* FatalError has no stack trace?
 - We'll change FatalError so that it is not ControlThrowable anymore.

* scala.dbc
 - Currently unsupported, we will move to deprecate it. Good user-developed alternatives are now available (Squeryl, ScalaQuery, etc)

--
Daniel C. Sobral

I travel to the future all the time.

I would normally agree but Java seem to have bucked the trend in recent years, introducing all the following in "dot dot dot" releases of 1.6.0:
 - Modularisation of virtual machine - Significant changes to applet deployment - G1 garbage collector - Nimbus look and feel

I think it's reasonable to *add* features in such a release, as long as binary compatibility is maintained.
Chris
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:46:29 -0800
Subject: Re: [scala-internals] Scala Meeting report, 2010-03-09
From: feeder.of.the.bears@gmail.com

One thing (and this goes to the numbering discussion that we've had a number of times), please do not add features to a dot-dot release.  

Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

Java does that so it can slip in new versions past enterprise policies. I see no reason why Scala can't just adopt a reasonable versioning standard.

On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 12:21 PM, christopher marshall <oxbow_lakes@hotmail.com> wrote:

I would normally agree but Java seem to have bucked the trend in recent years, introducing all the following in "dot dot dot" releases of 1.6.0:
 - Modularisation of virtual machine  - Significant changes to applet deployment - G1 garbage collector - Nimbus look and feel

I think it's reasonable to *add* features in such a release, as long as binary compatibility is maintained.
Chris
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:46:29 -0800
Subject: Re: [scala-internals] Scala Meeting report, 2010-03-09
From: feeder.of.the.bears@gmail.com

One thing (and this goes to the numbering discussion that we've had a number of times), please do not add features to a dot-dot release.  

Do you have a story that started on Hotmail? Tell us now

--
Daniel C. Sobral

I travel to the future all the time.