Chapel project meeting: 2025-09-02 (agenda items, meeting link, notes)

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This discussion is for the weekly Chapel project meeting.

Date/Time: 2025-09-02 at 10am PT
Join the meeting using this Teams link

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Prior to the meeting, propose any agenda items using comments below. After the meeting, rough notes will be added in comments.

Typically, these meetings consist of:

• News: Quick updates or announcements to keep people in the loop on key efforts or topics
• Demos: Have something cool to show off? Do it in a ~5-minute demo
• Short Topics: Have something that needs a quick discussion, description, or straw poll? Propose a ~5-minute discussion topic
• Longer Topics: If you have a topic needing more time, propose it with an estimated duration and we'll try to fit it in.

If you'd like to propose an item in any of these categories, please reply to this discussion.

In addition to the above sections, we have some standing agenda items, such as:

• Triage: What is the state of testing and are there issues that need more attention?
• User Issues: What new user issues have come up in the past week, and which should we prioritize?
• Q&A: Have something you want to ask, but not on the clock? We'll open the floor to Q&A as the official meeting wraps up.

[jabraham17]

I would like to discuss #27615 again now that I've collected more information

[bradcray]

If time permits, we could potentially go around the horn to see what people are still hoping to get done for the release.

[DanilaFe]

I'd like to demo my work on array type queries.

[lydia-duncan]

Here's the snapshot of today's user issues report

[bradcray]

Agenda / Notes

News/Announcements

• Feature freeze for Chapel 2.6 is Thursday (doc/code freezes next week)

• HPSF:

  • Forming the TSC by inviting current committers to participate
  • Hope to have the first TSC meeting soon, likely in a Thurs deep-dive slot

• ChapelCon '25 registration is open:

  • https://hpe.zoom.us/meeting/register/S5_B0LotTneo37gVpoJ68g

• Daniel's blog article on using MCP/GenAI with Chapel published last week:

  • https://chapel-lang.org/blog/posts/claude-mcp/

• Chapel talk accepted to SeaGL, Nov 7-8

Triage Status

• Daniel: end-of-(bonus)-rotation update
  • surprisingly quiet, categorically speaking
    • CHAMPS: still failing due to broken code merged by CHAMPS devs
    • Dyno test config still failing as we lock down behavior on spec tests
      • only being sent to subset of team
    • portability tests for apptainer and vagrant are failing
      • apptainer issue currently unowned: Daniel will check failure mode
      • vagrant: Anna owns, believes it's fixed
    • Arkouda: shuffle test is failing, seemingly due to PR changing algorithm
    • EX tests failing due to broken pipes -- likely system outage
  • Engin's up next

User Issues

• Lydia: weekly report
  • two new user issues that were not immediately resolved
    • old version of binary-trees generated internal compiler error
    • one requesting MongoDB support from prospective user meeting
  • resolved an issue in which 'make clean' in 'benchmarks' caused error
  • older issue of the week: SQL support
    • Jade: SQL queries or ingesting SQL database?
    • Lydia: Not certain...
    • Daniel: Language support is generally fairly abstract in practice in HLLs
    • Engin: Also came up in past to support SQL queries in Arkouda

Demos

• Daniel: Dyno array type queries

Release round-table

Brad Chamberlain

feature freeze: nothing

code/doc freeze: nothing

concerns: state of some testing configs (Arkouda, CHAMPS, portability, tarball)

Daniel

feature freeze: Dyno resolution PRs

code/doc freeze: nothing

concerns: none

Jade

feature freeze:

• two ChapelPy PRs -- need to address feedback
• debuggerBreakHere improvement
• pass through deprecated features, see what can be removed
  • will open issue listing what they find

code/doc freeze:

• LLVM debug symbols bug -- mostly solved, but not yet bulletproof
  • stretch at this point
• compiler bug fixes -- trying to get done as many as possible

concerns: none

Ben

feature freeze: Dyno type converter improvements, focused on IO primarily

code/doc freeze: nothing

concerns: none

Engin

feature freeze:

• look at Arkouda/CHAMPS warnings (could be during code/doc too)
  • will create issue if a long list of things

code/doc freeze:

concerns: Would like to understand where we are w.r.t. Oliver's sparse features

• probably not much happening due to Oliver being out the next few days

Lydia

feature freeze: parallel Python support (stretch at this point)

code/doc freeze:

• attributes docs update to list edition attribute
• update license file for dependencies
  • update scspell -> scspell3k

concerns: none

Anna

feature freeze: big Dyno resolution PR

code/doc freeze: nothing

concerns: Will be out for 3 days during code/doc freeze days (W-F next week)

DavidL

feature freeze:

• 3 dlopen PRs needing reviewers

code/doc freeze:

• PR to add more module doc testing

concerns: none

Shreyas

feature freeze: nothing

code/doc freeze: refresh of unstable warning anonymizer script

concerns: none

Discussion Topics

• lingering concerns/topics from release round-table above?

  • none

• Jade: state of optimizations during debugging, round 2

  • in Disable select optimization passes when --debug/-g is used #27615 (comment)
    • put together list of passes and associated flags
    • also list of other flags that seem relevant
    • proposed list of flags to flip with debugging
  • request that team members with familiarity with flags review list to see
    what they think
    Engin: ...[I missed this]…
    Engin: Did we decide what flag or flags would look like?
    Jade: Straw poll suggested option 2 was in the lead (from issue above)

Post-meeting

Office Hours / Q&A

TODOs / Open Issues

• set up template for CHANGES.md entries for 2.6
• review Jade's list of proposed flags to flip when debugging w/ opts off