Thanks a lot for this summary and review, so us devs who weren't there
are aware of off-list discussions. Thanks all for the brainstorming work
too!
Cheers,
Allan
On 12/7/18 12:23 AM, Ralf Gommers wrote:
Hi all,
A little while ago I wrote a blog post about the history of us
constructing the roadmap we currently have:
https://rgommers.github.io/2018/10/the-making-of-the-numpy-roadmap/.
There was a request to post it to this list, which seems appropriate. So
below it is in full.
Cheers,
Ralf
NumPy now has a [roadmap](https://www.numpy.org/neps/index.html#roadmap)
- long overdue and a major step forward for the project. We're not done
yet (see [my previous
post](https://rgommers.github.io/2018/10/2018-numfocus-summit---a-summary/)
on this topic) and updating the technical roadmap with new ideas and
priorities should happen regularly. Despite everything having been done
in the open, via minutes of in-person meetings and shared roadmap drafts
on the numpy-discussion mailing list, it turns out that it's not
completely clear to the community and even some maintainers how we got
to this point. So now seems like a good time for a summary.
## Act 1: NumPy sprint at BIDS
During 24-25 May 2018 a number of people - Stéfan van der Walt, Charles
Harris, Stephan Hoyer, Matti Picus, Jarrod Millman, Nathaniel J. Smith,
and Matthew Rocklin - came together at
[BIDS](https://bids.berkeley.edu/) in Berkeley for a NumPy sprint. They
had a productive brainstorm, which resulted in a rough draft of a
roadmap posted to the mailing list. The mailing list thread, [A roadmap
for NumPy - longer term
planning](https://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2018-June/thread.html#78103),
produced more suggestions and after incorporating those a [first pull
request](https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/11446) was made.
## Act 2: BoF and sprint at SciPy'18
In order to collect input from as many people in the community as
possible, a BoF ([birds of a
feather](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_of_a_feather_(computing)
session) was held on 12 July 2018 during the SciPy 2018 conference in
Austin. Stephan Hoyer presented an overview of recent NEPs, and Matti
Picus presented the first roadmap draft and led a discussion with (I
estimate) 30-40 people in which a number of new ideas were added. Other
maintainers present included Charles Harris, Tyler Reddy, Ralf Gommers
and Stéfan van der Walt; many other participants were developers of
libraries that depend on NumPy.
At this point we had a fairly complete list of roadmap items, however
the document itself was still more a brainstorm dump than a roadmap
document. So during the NumPy sprint after the conference on 14 July
2018 Ralf Gommers and Stephan Hoyer sat together to reshape and clean up
these ideas. That resulted in [roadmap draft
v2](https://github.com/numpy/numpy/wiki/NumPy-roadmap-v2) - not yet
fully polished, but getting closer to something ready for acceptance.
## Act 3: NumPy sprint at BIDS
In-person meetings seem to be critical to moving a complex and important
document like a project roadmap forward. So the next draft was produced
during a second NumPy sprint at Berkeley during 23-27 July 2018.
Present were Stéfan van der Walt, Matti Picus, Tyler Reddy and Ralf
Gommers. We polished the document, worked out the [Scope of
NumPy](https://www.numpy.org/neps/scope.html) section in more detail,
and integrated the roadmap in the html docs. During the sprint a [pull
request](https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/11611) was sent, and
[posted](https://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2018-July/thread.html#78458)
again to the mailing list. Everyone seemed happy, and after addressing
the final few review comments the roadmap was merged on 2 August 2018.
*Final thought: NumPy development is accelerating at the moment, and
in-person meetings and having the people and funding at BIDS to organize
sprints has been a huge help. See https://github.com/BIDS-numpy/docs for
an overview of what has been organized in the last year.*
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