Online Developer Meeting (2023-07-25)

Today's topics

Release of Octave 8.3.0?
- Approximately 22 bugs fixed on the stable branch since the release of Octave 8.2.0 (plus additional updates on MXE Octave).
- A new release will be made when jwe comes around to it. No release candidate.
Octave online community event
- Online poll indicates best time would be October or November, 2023
- Brainstorm event goals (social interaction, specific coding projects, something else?), duration.
- Rik will post a thread on discourse with a poll for possible topics.
OctConf 2024
- Online poll indicates best time would be April-June or October-November, 2024
- Discuss conference goals, duration, location
- Rik will post a thread on discourse with follow-up questions. (E.g., location, weekend or weekdays, attach to other community meetings)
Move MXE Octave builds to default to UCRT? See: Thread on Discourse
- Switch default branch of MXE Octave to UCRT to check if it builds and works.
- Announce that Octave 9 will require Windows 8.1 or newer for the distributed Windows binaries.
GSoC updates
Docker images for weekly(?) built versions of Octave from the stable and the default branch could be useful for Octave package developers that would like to catch early if their package needs to adapt for API changes in core Octave.
- It needs to be made clear to everyone that these images are expected to break at any point. That shouldn't reflect on the image of Octave's quality in general.
- See: should we host devel and stable images?

FYI: Colin Macdonald applied (and received) the GitLab for Open Source programme for https://GitLab.com/gnu-octave.
- alternative to github.com/gnu-octave.
- large number of CI/CD minutes, compared to the low-tier offering.
- It must be renewed yearly (by Colin, although I think that can be changed).

VM updates
- VM was pushed last week.
- Jwe has list of todo activities and questions about the VM. E.g. future maintenance, coding style, etc.
- Arun reported that tuned gcc-specific code is some 20% slower than clang-compiled generic code. Will test more to see if compiler-specific code is needed.
- Jwe reported finding further Matlab incompatibilities in classdef code. Andreas stated that was OK and not of much concern to end users, who would prefer domain functionality over strict Matlab compatibility, especially in object-oriented code.

GSoC activities
- Pythonic project: going well, we have weekly meetings, see blog posts for plans and progress.
- Andreas expressed concern about the kNN project's slow progress. Will meet with his student this week.
- Any travel for GSoC? Colin: small chance I could go, but happy for someone else too.

Other stuff
- Rik enquired on status of transfer from FSF to NumFOCUS. Jwe reports in progress. Waiting for certain documents to be finalized and signed. Arun reports financial mechanisms in place to transfer funds when ready.
- Rik created polls on Discourse re timing for Octave conferences and online activities like code sprints. Voting ongoing.