June/July 2023 Steering Council Update

Committers
1

The June and July SC updates have been posted on GitHub and are included below:

June 2023

2023-06-05

  • Three Steering Council members were available to meet today, Emily and Pablo were traveling.
  • The SC met with Łukasz, the Developer-in-Residence, and discussed:
    • The new Deputy Developer-in-Residence job description draft.
    • EuroPython coming up and Łukasz helping coordinate a core sprint there.
  • Discussed all our PEP 703 (Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional in CPython) thoughts.
  • Discussed OpenSSL 3.x support backporting needs for older releases.
  • Discussed 3.12 and 3.13 release schedule planning with Thomas (release manager hat).
  • Discussed ongoing 3.12beta1 early findings as projects try it out.
  • Briefly discussed support for core developer mentorship with Deb.

2023-06-12

2023-06-19

2023-06-26

  • The Steering Council met with Seth Larson, the new Security Developer-in-Residence. One of Seth’s tasks is to improve the process behind the Python Security Response Team (PSRT), and to investigate the PSRT or PSF becoming a MITRE Sub-CNA, so it has authority over the reporting and ranking of CVEs. Seth will be working mostly with the PSRT team, only planning to have email discussions or ad-hoc meetings with the SC for now.
  • The SC met with Łukasz, the Developer-in-Residence, and discussed:
    • Łukasz handling the macOS installer build as well as the Windows build for 3.12 beta 4.
    • His keynote at PyCon Colombia.
    • A new EdgeDB release that should alleviate CLA bot inefficiencies.
    • EuroPython, his planned talk, the Core Dev panel, and the sprints there.
    • The Deputy Developer-in-Residence job opening, which will be posted this week.
  • The SC discussed json.AttrDict, which was added without review or discussion, with previous proposals having been rejected, and agreed with the rollback of it for now, at least until it can be discussed on discuss.python.org and a consensus is reached.
  • The SC briefly discussed other open issues involving Python 3.12, leaving them to the Release Team to handle.
  • The SC officially invited Russel Keith-Magee to the Core Dev Sprint in Brno in October.

July 2023

2023-07-03

  • The Steering Council checked in on ongoing conduct issues and the steps to handle them.
  • The SC discussed an email that suggested an update to PEP 12 (Sample reStructuredText PEP Template) to formalize including acceptance and rejection rationale to PEPs once they have a decision. The SC thinks this is a good idea and will work on drafting this change.
  • The SC discussed dropping the python-committers mailing list. An email will be sent to gauge interest and usage of the mailing list.

2023-07-10

  • The Steering Council met with Łukasz, the Developer-in-Residence, and discussed:
    • The Deputy Developer-in-Residence job, which has been posted and started receiving applications.
    • The 3.12 final beta release, which has a few important bug fix PRs that are open.
    • EuroPython, which is happening next week. Łukasz will be giving a talk and running a panel along with sprints
  • The SC continued to discuss support for core developer mentorship with Deb. The distinction between supporting mentorship for new core developers and improving the process of becoming a core developer was raised – we are specifically looking for how to support existing core developers in mentoring contributors. The SC decided to pause the discussion to solidify what we are looking for in this arrangement.
  • The SC discussed PEP 703 (Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional in CPython).
    • The poll results are in and indicate that 87% of respondents think we should be actively looking to make Python free-threaded and 63% want to accept and support the maintenance cost of PEP 703.
    • Proceeding with caution, the SC decided to formalize a statement on our intention to accept the PEP, along with requirements and expectations for doing so.
  • The SC discussed two C API changes in 3.12 that did not follow PEP 387 (Backwards Compatibility Policy) to decide how they should be handled, namely:
    • Type Object’s tp_dict can now be NULL. This has limited impact and is likely acceptable.
    • PyLongObject implementation and ob_digits. The SC decided to roll back changes only in 3.12, not main (3.13) for now. Overall, this change is okay.
  • The SC checked in on requiring PR reviews; a poll has been opened.

2023-07-17

  • The Steering Council checked in on ongoing conduct issues and the steps to handle them.
  • The SC received feedback from the community on the lack of use for the python-committers email list and decided to close it.
  • The SC continued to discuss PEP 703 (Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional in CPython), with a focus on establishing a hard list of requirements for acceptance to be included in a forthcoming pre-announcement.

2023-07-24

  • The Steering Council met with Łukasz, the Developer-in-Residence, and discussed:
    • How EuroPython went (both the conference and the sprints).
    • dtrace and how to test the probes so they keep functioning.
    • Miss Islington needs porting to GitHub Actions before we can switch over to requiring 2FA.
    • The SC asked the DiR to evaluate how we could require code reviews for feature PRs.
  • The SC discussed support for core developer mentorship, namely the budget around a proposal to do an inventory of the current mentorship program.
  • The SC gave our approval to the Security Developer-in-Residence for their CNA proposal.
  • The SC discussed updating non-borrowing C APIs to match borrowing ones.
  • The SC continued to discuss PEP 703 (Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional in CPython).

2023-07-31

9 Likes
2

In the 3.12 branch, I still see the change:

struct _longobject {
    PyObject_HEAD
    _PyLongValue long_value;
};

What’s New in Python 3.12: What’s New In Python 3.12 — Python 3.13.0a0 documentation

PyLongObject has had its internals changed for better performance. (…)

What the revert missed, or did SC changed their mind? I have no opinion on this specific change, I’m just curious since I looked at this code recently.

2 Likes
3

Do you have details on this topic? I’m now curious :slight_smile:

4

This really was just us talking about decision: Should we add non-borrowed-ref public C APIs, if so, is there a naming convention? · Issue #201 · python/steering-council · GitHub related things which we ultimately punted back over to the C API working group.

2 Likes