Meeting weekly 2012 01 10

Attending

Brian, Dave, Graydon, Jesse, Marijn, Niko, Patrick

Remaining issues for 0.1 release

Issue #1454

• Niko: we can spawn tasks, joinable tasks, and connected tasks; three different API's, which could be improved
• Graydon: all library things will be junky for a while; that's ok for first release
• Niko: syntax for various functions needs work; what should we call bare functions and blocks?
  • lambda --> fn@
  • block --> fn~
  • or block --> fn but then what do we call bare functions?
• Marijn: could you update the tutorial when you make this change?
• Niko: yes, once we decide on syntax
• Jesse: call blocks "stack fns?"
• Niko: yeah, I like that, or stack closure
• Graydon: terminology-wise that's fine; in the syntax, I'm ok calling bare functions native; doesn't enter into programs too often
• Niko: sure. could also change the representation to a naked pointer but I don't want to risk the bugs before first release
• Graydon: yeah, rep has tons of grotty stuff in C ABI, not likely to work easily
• Niko: OK, I'll make the change this morning

Issue #1448

• Graydon: not a blocker
• Niko: it's confusing
• Graydon: yeah, but not a problem for 0.1 release

Issue #1446, #1445

• Graydon: needed for release

Issue #1430

• Graydon: no opinion
• Niko: I never know when to use ; and when to use , -- better to make these changes now if possible
• Graydon: I'm fine with it
• Patrick: I may do this one in between Fennec compiles

Issue #1428

• Patrick: I'm almost ready to give up on this question
• Dave: I like enum
• Patrick: what about newtype analog?
• Niko: not a big deal
• All: enum is good

Issue #1427

• Tim: I'm doing this

Issue #1426

• Graydon: not blocking

Issue #1425

• Graydon: not blocking
• Niko: non-trivial
• Patrick: I started, won't finish in time

Issue #1381

• Graydon: easy, along with release notes

Issue #1343

• Graydon: not cool
• Niko: it's a problem; can we comment out that code?
• Brian: just doesn't work to build with debug on 32-bit
• Niko: it used to work
• Graydon: feels like a release note
• Patrick: force it off and warn when compiling with -g?
• Brian: I'll do that

Issue #1078

• Niko: this is currently in C++, has leaks when failing during unwind etc, but shouldn't block release
• Niko: I'll update

Issue #1011

• Graydon: there's a supposed solution?
• Brian: two Windows features that supposedly provide rpath functionality; could add something before main() to set up paths; seems like a hack
• Graydon: but might work! alternative is inject something in installer to update PATH
• Dave: sounds brittle
• Graydon: and users don't like programs mucking with their PATH
• Brian: I'll look into it

Issue #427

• Niko: unfinished; has holes; task system needs work
• Graydon: type classes?
• Marijn: not sure it's ready for broadcasting
• Graydon: I'm working on converting manual to markdown; can we merge them?
• Dave: I kinda like having them separate; manual is official reference, whereas tutorial is a starting point
• Patrick: yeah
• Marijn: who styled the lib docs? could use restyling -- do now?
• Graydon: I'd like to escalate getting rust-doc formatting the way we want on the web; everyone will start using it and it will create a standard style
• Brian: you'll do that?
• Graydon: yeah, I'll look into it
• Dave: would it make sense not to include rust-doc in release yet?
• Graydon: no, just needs a week or so of cleanup

Issue #32

• Brian: LLVM patches have gone through 2 rounds of review; should be accepted today and then we can go back to LLVM trunk
• Brian: we have huge red ones but we can punt on that for 0.1
• Graydon: great, so we can close this issue in another day or two

Release

• Patrick: I propose release in a week
• Graydon: well, I'm fighting makefiles! hope we can make that
• Niko: one thing not in list: stuff from fuzzer
• Graydon: I'm okay releasing 0.1 with bugginess
• Graydon: Patrick -- syntax changes?
• Patrick: yeah, I can do those

Work week

• Dave: work week: Berlin? Feb?
• Niko: I have some constraints
• Dave: I'll collect constraints
• Andreas: Marijn -- know any good Berlin hotels we can use?
• Marijn: no, but I'll look

Object system

• Patrick: motivation for classes
  • I wrote up a proposal a while back
  • typeclasses subsume interfaces
  • when you have a first-class value w/ typeclass as type, you get a structural object
  • what we have in classes that pure typeclasses don't is private data
  • that's why I'm in favor of having class aspect of original proposal
  • nominal records, private fields, constructor
  • can cast into typeclass with subset of methods
• Dave: note that "interfaces" in Haskell are bounded existentials
• Niko: interfaces like closures; worth sigils for sendability?
• Graydon: sounds like stuff for further down the road
• Marijn: you can get privacy with old system using hidden types exported as abstract types from modules
• Graydon: I think we could remove our old object system
• Marijn: for 0.1 leave t
• Dave: I don't mind leaving it and shipping
• Niko: I'd rather have a more stable one; currently buggy but don't want new bugginess
• Graydon: one other point: self-calls and overriding
• Marijn: overriding doesn't exist in the abstract types approach
• Dave: don't want to risk new bugginess at 11th hour
• Graydon: I'll take out of docs, say it's deprecated

Syntax

• Dave: syntax point: I heard about Go's cast syntax and it sounds sweet

Admin, release

• Graydon: anyone have make-or-break packaging issues? raise now
• Patrick: Mac & Linux users comfortable with git clone -- Windows is the main issue
• Dave: can we transfer to github/mozilla/rust?
• Jesse: bunch of broken links in wiki, Google is linking to 404's
• Dave: I'll give Graydon admin rights to mozilla github account
• Graydon: branching/tagging model? git flow?
• Brian: could we prohibit landing on master for a few mnoths?
• Graydon: we'll continue this conversation by email