SIP minutes: 2019 November

_sips/minutes/2019-11-27-sip-minutes.md

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+---
+layout: sips
+title: SIP Meeting Minutes - November 27 2019
+
+partof: minutes
+---
+
+# Minutes
+
+The following agenda was distributed to attendees:
+
+1. Re-visiting what SIP Committee's role is given the Scala 2 to 3 transition
+2. Dotty feature freeze is coming soon - what does that mean?
+3. Review the "Curried varargs" SIP
+4. Review the "Name-based XML literals" SIP
+5. The priority of Dotty features the SIP Committee has to discuss
+
+## Date and Location
+
+The meeting took place on the 27th November 2019 at 17:00 CET via Zoom at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, as well as other locations.
+
+The meeting was broadcast and recorded on the Scala Process's YouTube channel, but due to technical difficulties
+that broadcast had to be restarted half-way through and therefore there are two videos:
+
+* part 1 (16:56): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjEcYY2R9mU>
+* part 2 (06:43): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFjjYybY_wY>
+
+Minutes were taken by Dale Wijnand.
+
+## Attendees
+
+* Martin Odersky ([@odersky](https://github.com/odersky)), EPFL
+* Darja Jovanovic ([@darjutak](https://github.com/darjutak)), Process Lead
+* Sébastien Doeraene ([@sjrd](https://github.com/sjrd)), Scala Center
+* Guillaume Martres ([@smarter](https://github.com/smarter), EPFL
+* Heather Miller ([@heathermiller](https://github.com/heathermiller)), CMU
+* Adriaan Moors ([@adriaanm](https://github.com/adriaanm)), Lightbend
+* Iulian Dragos ([@dragos](https://github.com/dragos)), Triplequote
+* Miles Sabin ([@milessabin](https://github.com/milessabin)), Independent
+* Lukas Rytz ([@lrytz](https://twitter.com/lrytz)), visiting from Lightbend
+* Dale Wijnand ([@dwijnand](https://twitter.com/dwijnand)), secretary
+
+## Not present
+
+* Seth Tisue ([@SethTisue](https://github.com/SethTisue)), Lightbend
+* Josh Suereth ([@jsuereth](https://github.com/jsuereth)), Independent
+
+## Proceedings
+
+### Re-visiting what SIP Committee's role is given the Scala 2 to 3 transition
+
+* What happens to the current SIPs?
+* What is the timeline for them?
+* Who can make new proposals?
+* Which changes to the process were made in November 2018?
+* And which changes should be made going forward?
+
+Darja presented the topic.  The background is that in November 2018 the SIP Committee accepted the "Dotty team
+proposal of changes", which wasn't like the regular SIP proposals but is more like a large number of proposals
+for Scala 3.  Those individual proposals still need to be individually reviewed, but doing so will take time.
+
+During that time many pre-existing SIPs didn't progress in any way, some remained "open" when they should've
+been closed a long time ago and, more generally, the status of them and the Dotty features SIPs wasn't clear or
+well tracked.
+
+Therefore the SIP Committee has decided to:
+
+1. Make a commitment to update the state of all SIPs by March 2020;
+2. Change the process to introduce the concept of a "SIP Champion", which is a member of the SIP Committee that
+   a contributor finds to progress a Pre-SIP idea into a SIP and to champion the SIP through the process
+
+### Dotty feature freeze is coming soon - what does that mean?
+
+Guillaume presented.
+
+A month ago a thread was created on the [Contributors forum announcing that the next Dotty release][freeze] will
+initiate a feature freeze.  What that means is that new things won't be added, instead existing changes will
+be refined.  That doesn't mean that new SIPs can't be proposed, but it does mean that such SIPs should adjust
+their expectations that its very unlikely they'll be able to target Scala 3.0 and would have to wait for some
+future 3.x release.
+
+[freeze]: https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/preparing-for-feature-freeze/3780
+
+### Discuss the priority of Dotty features the SIP Committee has to discuss
+
+Darja briefly mentioned this task the Committee has, but the discussion itself deferred to expedite the later
+topics.
+
+In order to discuss and make decisions on the features coming in Scala 3, the Committee has been looking at how
+to prioritise such discussions.  Sebastien has started exploring the timing impacts of each change (related to
+how they impact rewriting books/MOOCs, impact source and TASTy compatibility) and experimenting with different
+logistical proposals.
+
+This is still pending, but in the December SIP meeting the Committee will have features it's ready to discuss
+and vote upon.
+
+### Review the "Curried varargs" SIP
+
+Link: <https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/pre-sip-curried-varargs/3608>
+
+Sebastien presented.
+
+The proposal highlighted 2 issues with the current implementation of varargs:
+
+1. Arguments LUB together, such as an `Int`, a `String`, and a user's `Foo` will LUB to `Any`, this means that
+   one cannot make use of implicit lookup to summon typeclass instances for the specific types of the arguments
+2. The current varargs use `Seq` which is an extra allocation that may be costly
+
+The proposal is to add a builder-like interface (perhaps like a typeclass?) that avoid the type widening and the
+intermediate `Seq` by building instead the desired data structure.
+
+Martin believes that it should be possible to implement such a proposal with Dotty's meta-programming features,
+specifically inline methods.  This would avoid having to "burn it into the language", particularly avoid adding
+to the already complex aspects of parameter application.
+
+Guillaume adds that that area also includes method overloading that is very complicated and already requires
+attention.  He also adds that it might be that use cases that call for this proposals should look at Dotty's
+union types, as he thinks that some of them might be satisfied by having a varargs of union types.
+
+In response to the "but with macros it will be slow" pushback, Guillaume invites users to check the performance
+of the Dotty-based implementation, and/or the union type-based solution.  Additionally he and Sebastien say how
+making it part of the language (instead of just where the meta-programming solution is used) it would probably
+make the whole compiler slower for everyone.
+
+### Review the "Name-based XML literals" SIP
+
+Link: <https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/pre-sip-name-based-xml-literals/2175>
+
+Sebastien presented.
+
+The proposal is for a way to extend XML literals, perhaps allowing alternative implementation with a somewhat
+similar API.  In general there is a resistence to keeping XML literals in the language at all, though the
+front-end community has exhibited support for XML literals as it's a convenience that Scala.js brings.
+
+The feedback from the Committee is (similarly to the previous SIP) to attempt to implement it using Dotty's
+meta-programming facilities, so a meta-programming backed string interpolator.
+
+Guillaume mentions that there is an interpolator at <https://github.com/lampepfl/xml-interpolator/>, which
+implements all of the XML literals except for pattern matching (which just needs attention) and invites the SIP
+authors to adapt that to the behaviour described in their SIP.
+
+### Update on the "Revised implicits" SIP
+
+Guillaume gave a quick update: a new thread was created on the Contributors forum to discuss how Scala's
+implicits are being revised in Scala 3: <https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/updated-proposal-revisiting-implicits/3821>
+
+Because the discussion has returned to debating the naming change, he intends to split the thread so that
+also-important discussions around the semantics changes aren't drowned out.
+
+## Next
+
+The next meeting will be December 18th at 5 PM CET, but also the Committee intends to have another retreat in
+March 2020.