MaintainersJan2024
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Contents
Date/Time/Venue
Topic: ns-3.41 and future plans
We will have *two* Zoom meetings so that everyone can join at least one.
- January 16, 2024 08:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
- January 26, 2024 08:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada), 16h00 UTC
Join January 26 Zoom Meeting https://washington.zoom.us/j/97358595600?pwd=UGhKekhKaG1mM3ZHNkR1RS96VEdSZz09
Meeting ID: 973 5859 5600 Passcode: 155509
Agenda for January 16 meeting
1) ns-3.41 January release goals and plans from anyone? (15-20 minutes)
- Revisit what we are doing for C++-20 support
- Eduardo wants to discuss MR !1701 - CI: Add stage to generate GitLab releases of stable ns-3 versions (possibly to merge for ns-3.41)
Any other ns-3.41 issues?
2) Google Summer of Code 2024
Are we participating? If so, who is participating, and what changes do we want to make this year?
3) WNS3 2024 plans
- Discuss this meeting summary document
4) Update on ns-3 consortium, SPI funds, and other admin items (infrastructure)
Agenda for January 26 meeting
Largely the same as the January 16 meeting (some different participants)
Materials
Minutes (Jan. 16 meeting)
Attendees: Tom Henderson, Gabriel Ferreira, Tommaso Pecorella, Biljana Bojovic, Mohit Tahiliani, Eduardo Almeida, Stefano Avallone, Piyush Aggarwal
ns-3.41 release
Eduardo introduced !1701 on using the CI to generate ns-3 releases for downloads from GitLab.com, and there was agreement to merge it.
Regarding C++20, we have support enabled but can only use features supported by our oldest compilers supported.
Stefano still plans to submit EMLSR patch.
GSoC 2023 mentor summit
Tom reviewed some personal observations from GSoC 2023 mentors summit, including roadmaps, project diversity, community managers, the use of AI in open source projects, and sessions on green GSoC and green use of project infrastructure. There wasn't much discussion about these points.
GSoC 2024
The project needs to decide on participating in GSoC 2024. Mentors are needed. Tom said that he has experimented with both 'mentor-defined' and 'student-defined' projects and each has its pros and cons but neither lately have led to many people staying with the project. Mohit had suggested that possibly other research organizations who use ns-3 could mentor if paired with an ns-3 maintainer, but there didn't seem to be much support for that idea. Eduardo remarked that we tend to have a problem of not allowing enough time to merge at the end of projects, and Tommaso and Tom said that this problem was well known and is somewhat driven by contributors feeling that they need to propose a big project to get selected for the program.
WNS3 2024
We discussed plans for and had some brief brainstorming about WNS3. Regarding making the meeting hybrid vs. recorded for later, Eduardo noted that he didn't perceive much interaction from the remote audience and it may be easier on us to simply record sessions and make them available later. Regarding possible tutorials, Tommaso suggested one on 'how to read the manual' and 'how to find what you are looking for' (in response to many ns-3-users queries). Mohit suggested possibly one on new examples and tutorials under preparation.
Longer term plans
Tom outlined some longer term plans regarding the establishment of a steering committee with fiscal management handled by SPI, and encouraged people to look into SciPy's governance as a possible template. There was some sentiment expressed in favor of migrating web servers from university hosted to commercial hosted.
Minutes (Jan. 26 meeting)
Attendees: Tom Henderson, Sebastien Deronne, Peter Barnes, Tommaso Pecorella, Katerina Koutlia, Eduardo Almeida, others (missing from my notes)...
C++20
Is it safe to use now? Yes as of ns-3.41
Doxygen
Sebastien noted that the Doxygen annotation character of backslash is not handled properly by clang-format, while the ampersand character is. He suggested to change the codebase.accordingly.
Roadmaps
Tom mentioned the lack of publicly posted technical roadmaps and the difficulty in generating them. Peter mentioned that it would be helpful for tighter coupling of user/dev community for tools that are not quite there yet (medium term planning).
Use of AI/LLM
Tom mentioned that we do not have a project policy about using these tools in codebase, or for Google Summer of Code. Students will use these tools but not be aware of pitfalls. Perhaps we need to educate people on the strengths and limitations with respect to ns-3. Tommaso suggested, for GSoC, to disclose if you are using it, and shape the timeline based on it.
GSoC
Are we doing it? CTTC said that they wanted to mentor a student and will generate ideas. Also, some discussion about organization of project ideas; Tommaso commented that it is hard to organize them but we could work on this.
WNS3
Should we hold a hybrid meeting or just record sessions? Katerina mentioned that hybrid format was difficult and possibly not worth it.
Site hosting
Tom mentioned the need to transition to private website hosting. Eduardo suggested to look for partnerships/sponsors for hosting.
