Meeting 2020-10-08 #46

repi · 2020-10-01T19:26:32Z

Previous meeting: #39

Meeting agenda: Discuss project scope overall and go/nogo for next phase(s)

(add links to issues and material for everyone to readup on beforehand)

Overview of reasons for the project to exist, and "levels"/milestones/roadmap: Roadmap, milestones, and functionality levels #47. Good to read beforehand, it's a lot.
After go/nogo, reaffirm our requirements before open-sourcing, and anything the community team can start on now to prepare for that. (@arirawr)

repi · 2020-10-14T18:45:19Z

Meeting notes

Participants

Went through and discussed the "feature levels" and overall status of the project (Roadmap, milestones, and functionality levels #47)
- Level 1 = basically done 🎉
New ways of exposing compute will be very exciting!
- "Both GLSL & HLSL ecosystems are stifled, Rust would be awesome" - anonymous
- @Tobski wanted this for a while
External users would primarily get value of it once we reach Level 3 (it is friendly to use), but could open source earlier also to start engaging and hopefully get more collaborators as well
Group decision: Let's Go, continue to work and bring up next level with shaders in Ark! (Embark's internal engine)

What do we need to continue the work effectively and scale up development and take on Level 2 support (Roadmap, milestones, and functionality levels #47)?
Need help on "language design" and adaption as well
- Not just compiler backend which @khyperia is focusing on
- To do things properly you need both GPU shading design and language/compiler design experience, which is very hard to find. But also very interesting/attractive area!
- @Tobski can help a bit. This will be tricky
What we need the most:
- Dev full time on build system ("Build system" #48) and shader library, parallel work to the compiler backend
- Additional compiler dev, that can make language design decisions. Offload @khyperia
Discussed potential collaborators or people we can engage with or contract/hire
New devs joining Embark soon!
- @termhn - internship focusing on Rust GPU project! 2016-10-26
- @XAMPPRocky - open source dev / dev community, 2020-10-12
- @lipl - open source dev / compiler experience from Gleam, 2020-10-19
Start looking for additional compiler-experienced engineer, full-time or contract (remote is fine)
- Gather contacts / people of interest, esp. in Rust & GPU communities, and start reaching out to them @repi
- Sketch out "Compiler Engineer" job ad would be excellent to have posted when we open source the project (Open source repo & project #55)! @khyperia

Discussion: When to release?
- @khyperia: Would be comfortable open sourcing soon after basic build system ("Build system" #48) works well enough
- @repi: As long as repo is in good shape and we have a buildable example (Good project onboarding experience #28) and we are committed to the project (which we decided today), we could open up early and soon!
- @arirawr: Pretty comfortable with it right now, good docs!
- We have multiple new people joining soon with dev community experience that can help manage and supporti t also.
- Already have a first small easy to run example, just 1 day of cleanup. So ahead of RLSL in first usage experience
TODOs discussed (move/merge to Open source repo & project #55)
- Sketch out more on build system & what it involves, and how much work it is ("Build system" #48) - @khyperia
- Fix and clean up docs. @arirawr will go through it after, and test running
- Communicate clearly our phase and level of support + version (0.1?) in the readme for everyone. Set expectations
- Write more of details and wants to get to level 2
Decided that we want to make the GitHub repo and the Discord channel public at the same together, easiest. Then we start working in the open fully.
Decided we want to release as soon as possible, within the next week or two! 🚀 Tracked in Open source repo & project #55