Steering Council Update November/December 2023 (belated)

gpshead · August 15, 2024, 10:50pm

We’re finally clearing our backlog of updates before our newly hired professional takes over. I’ll be posting a series of these today.

Just as a reminder, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us or open an issue in the SC repo: GitHub - python/steering-council: Communications from the Steering Council. We also maintain SC office hours - though I’ve heard there may currently be issues with the apparently deprecated Google Calendar time slot tool, if so, just reach out to us to schedule.

Our December & November 2023 Steering Council update has been merged in Github; contents pasted here:

November & December 2023 Steering Council update

Steering Council discussion topics:
- PEPs
  - Confirmed our agreement to accept PEP 702 deprecations in the type system.
  - Discussed our first impressions of PEP 712 dataclasses converters. Decided to seek more consensus. We announced this PEP 712 feeling on discuss.
  - Discussed, read up on, and accepted PEP 729 Typing Governance.
  - Discussed, read up on, and accepted PEP 731 C API Working Group.
  - Briefly discussed PEP 726 module level __setattr__ and __delattr__. We expect the 2024 SC to decide. (editors note: It was rejected)
  - Discussed PEP-703 making the global interpreter lock optional naming and a desire to avoid putting negatives on the desired-to-be-legacy GIL term, thus “free-threading” rather than “nogil”.
  - Discussed and accepted PEP 730 iOS platform support.
  - Discussed and accepted PEP 732 documentation editorial board.
- Accepting Meta’s offer to host the core dev sprints in Washington in September 2024.
- The proposal for mentoring resources and how to gauge interest. Coordinated with the PSF for budget and a contract to make it happen.
- C API issues regarding removal of some APIs and potential conflicting goals.
- The status of our Supporting Developer in Residence contract.
- The status of woefully delayed monthly updates.
- That we have varying workflows and communication levels of different Working Groups (WGs) and if there are potential issues arising from that.
- That we needed to draft an official policy around “python” and “cpython” organizations on PyPI.
- Establishing a communication channel with all of our Developer in Residences.
- The possibility of encouraging more devguide entries about how the Tier 2 interpreter in ceval.c works.
- Ongoing research into state of the world around an OS “Fetch URL” API and if those could simplify bundled pip requirements.
- The in progress SC election process.
Sync-ups with Łukasz (Senior Developer in Residence), topics covered included:
- Recent work on coverage mode and a multi-line REPL.
- If there are potential for alternatives to Buildbot.
- The status of PEP 649 deferred evaluation of annotations, implementation(s).
- The successful start of our Supporting Developer in Residence, Serhiy Storchaka.
- The ongoing ARM performance benchmarking efforts with donated hardware. Including the renaming branch master to main while maintaining historical data requiring work.
- The status of two factor authentication (2FA) vs GitHub bots and the assurance that there won’t be any issues with the current bots when 2FA is rolled out.
- The decision to drop running BigMem buildbot on 3.12 and only run on main. This allows Łukasz to use existing hardware.
- Łukasz’s recent public appearances: Nokia C++ conference talk about async generators & a podcast episode about frame optimization.
End of term hand over meeting from the 2023 SC to the 2024 SC:
- Goodbye Brett, Welcome Barry!
- Discussed our current processes.