Online Developer Meeting (2022-05-24)

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Today's topics

  • The potential use of Jitter and other virtual machines to speed up Octave execution, by Mohammad-Reza Nabipoor.
  • Drop "native" MXE Octave builders from buildbot configuration?
  • Timeframe for Octave 7.2 release?
    • Important fixes (among others possible loss of .m file content on exit)
    • still unresolved: bug #62308 use of octave::feval causes error: function '...' not found
  • Update on Fosshost?
    • Buildbot worker on ARM hardware?
      • No, see below
    • Possible to run a Mercurial server? With mirror(?), forks for GSoC students(?), ...
      • Not impossible.
    • Short summary: Octave got one x86_64 server instance (2 cores, 4 GB memory, 500 GB HDD), useful as webserver probably?!
$ uname -a
Linux fosshost 5.10.0-14-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.113-1 (2022-04-29) x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ free -h
               total
Mem:           3.8Gi

$ lsblk 
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0   64G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   63G  0 part /
├─sda2   8:2    0    1K  0 part 
└─sda5   8:5    0  975M  0 part [SWAP]
sdb      8:16   0  500G  0 disk 
sr0     11:0    1  378M  0 rom 

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo   # two cores
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 15
model           : 6
model name      : Common KVM processor
stepping        : 1
microcode       : 0x1
cpu MHz         : 2400.084
cache size      : 16384 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 2
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 2
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx lm constant_tsc nopl xtopology cpuid tsc_known_freq pni cx16 x2apic hypervisor lahf_lm cpuid_fault pti
bugs            : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs itlb_multihit
bogomips        : 4800.16
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 128
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
  • Access by Arun, jwe, Kai, anyone with time and interest is welcome to help with the setup.
    • Kai thinks this could be a webserver, however, what is the benefit to the current situation? 😓

Previous topics

  • Meet and greet 5 minutes before meeting (audio testing).
  • Performance over time (Arun, Rik)
    • Discourse thread for background
    • Analysis and profiling of existing code base -- share and solicit experiences.
    • Performance benchmark to track speed over time as part of CI? (Not as part of CI for now, can be done separately, Arun will share progress updates on Discourse)
  • GSoC: call for mentors (Nir/Kai)
    • Interesting mentors should write to Nir or Kai before: 2022-05-06, ideally before.
    • Final deadline (to the sponsor) is May 12.
  • Octave 7.1.0 post-release remarks:
    • Overall time from merge of default to stable (2021-11-24) until release of version 7.1.0 (2022-04-06): approx. 4 months
      • Why does it take us so long for the last couple of releases?
      • Should we start the release process earlier?
    • A couple of bugs have been solved on the stable branch since the release. Last time we released 6.2.0 pretty early after 6.1.0. Should we do the same again?
    • Regressions that should probably be solved before a potential 7.2.0:
      • bug #62308: use of octave::feval causes error: function '...' not found
      • patch #10200: wrong axes using stairs in subplot --- This affects a lot more plotting functions besides stairs. They always plot into gca and ignore the input axes handle.
      • others?

See also