Node.js Technical Steering Committee (TSC) Meeting 2020-05-21

[mhdawson]

Time

UTC Thu 21-May-2020 21:00 (09:00 PM):

Timezone	Date/Time
US / Pacific	Thu 21-May-2020 14:00 (02:00 PM)
US / Mountain	Thu 21-May-2020 15:00 (03:00 PM)
US / Central	Thu 21-May-2020 16:00 (04:00 PM)
US / Eastern	Thu 21-May-2020 17:00 (05:00 PM)
London	Thu 21-May-2020 22:00 (10:00 PM)
Amsterdam	Thu 21-May-2020 23:00 (11:00 PM)
Moscow	Fri 22-May-2020 00:00 (12:00 AM)
Chennai	Fri 22-May-2020 02:30 (02:30 AM)
Hangzhou	Fri 22-May-2020 05:00 (05:00 AM)
Tokyo	Fri 22-May-2020 06:00 (06:00 AM)
Sydney	Fri 22-May-2020 07:00 (07:00 AM)

Or in your local time:

• http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Node.js+Foundation+Technical%20Steering%20Committee%20(TSC)+Meeting+2020-05-21&iso=20200521T21
• or http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=09PM+UTC%2C+May+21%2C+2020+in+local+time

Links

• Minutes Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uvCIm2AYxX0K2O7WAewIt-RZudMDZVsGghavvW_Tblo/edit

Agenda

Extracted from tsc-agenda labelled issues and pull requests from the nodejs org prior to the meeting.

nodejs/node

• [Regression in 14.1.0 - Windows] stdout is sometimes empty #33166
• src,win: Replacement of unsupported versions of Windows runtime exit. #33108
• Dispute of "block running on EOL Windows versions #31954" - Alternative Suggestion #33034
• process: Throw exception on --unhandled-rejections=default #33021
• bootstrap: include bootstrapped Environment in builtin snapshot #32984

nodejs/admin

• Approval to enable github pages for node-addon-examples #503
• Audit Google account access #389

Invited

• Anna Henningsen @addaleax (TSC)
• Anatoli Papirovski @apapirovski (TSC)
• Beth Griggs @BethGriggs (TSC)
• Ruben Bridgewater @BridgeAR (TSC)
• Сковорода Никита Андреевич @ChALkeR (TSC)
• Colin Ihrig @cjihrig (TSC)
• Shelley Vohr @codebytere (TSC)
• Daniel Bevenius @danbev (TSC)
• Franziska Hinkelmann @fhinkel (TSC)
• Gabriel Schulhof @gabrielschulhof (TSC)
• Gireesh Punathil @gireeshpunathil (TSC)
• James Snell @jasnell (TSC)
• Joyee Cheung @joyeecheung (TSC)
• Matheus Marchini @mmarchini (TSC)
• Matteo Collina @mcollina (TSC)
• Michael Dawson @mhdawson (TSC)
• Myles Borins @MylesBorins (TSC)
• Sam Roberts @sam-github (TSC)
• Michaël Zasso @targos (TSC)
• Tobias Nießen @tniessen (TSC)
• Rich Trott @Trott (TSC)

Observers/Guests

Notes

The agenda comes from issues labelled with tsc-agenda across all of the repositories in the nodejs org. Please label any additional issues that should be on the agenda before the meeting starts.

Joining the meeting

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/611357642
Regular password

Public participation

We stream our conference call straight to YouTube so anyone can listen to it live, it should start playing at https://www.youtube.com/c/nodejs+foundation/live when we turn it on. There's usually a short cat-herding time at the start of the meeting and then occasionally we have some quick private business to attend to before we can start recording & streaming. So be patient and it should show up.

Many of us will be on IRC in #node-dev on Freenode if you'd like to interact, we have a Q/A session scheduled at the end of the meeting if you'd like us to discuss anything in particular. @nodejs/collaborators in particular if there's anything you need from the TSC that's not worth putting on as a separate agenda item, this is a good place for that.

---

Invitees

Please use the following emoji reactions in this post to indicate your
availability.

• 👍 - Attending
• 👎 - Not attending
• 😕 - Not sure yet

[Trott]

Moderation Team Update: Some internal discussions around things we're keeping an eye on, but no moderation actions this week. @nodejs/moderation @nodejs/tsc @nodejs/community-committee

[Trott]

Let's hear some strategic initiative updates!

Current Initiatives

Initiative	Champion	Links
Modules	Myles Borins	https://github.com/nodejs/modules
Core Promise APIs	Matteo Collina
V8 Currency	Michaël Zasso
QUIC / HTTP3	James M Snell	https://github.com/nodejs/quic
Startup performance	Joyee Cheung	nodejs/node#17058 nodejs/node#21563
Build resources	Michael Dawson	nodejs/build#1154 (comment)

@MylesBorins @mcollina @targos @jasnell @joyeecheung @mhdawson

[mcollina]

No update on Promises

[targos]

No update on V8 Currency

[mhdawson]

No update on build resources

[jasnell]

No update on QUIC

[joyeecheung]

Update on startup performance:

• Relanding the blocking v8 patch https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/v8/v8/+/2212085
• src: include Environment in snapshot node#32761 was closed though the technical disagreement is still not settled (for differences between src: include Environment in snapshot node#32761 and bootstrap: include bootstrapped Environment in builtin snapshot  node#32984, see the discussions in https://docs.google.com/document/d/15bu038I36oILq5t4Qju1sS2nKudVB6NSGWz00oD48Q8/edit?usp=sharing, would love more input there to break the tie). As @jasnell mentioned in src: include Environment in snapshot node#32761 (comment) I think this reveals that we have some issues with the current process. Some points that I can think of
  • There should've been a better way to communicate about active efforts to avoid duplication of work and competition. In this case there were occasional updates in the tracking issue RFC: speeding up Node.js startup using V8 snapshot node#17058, related PRs and meetings, but those were not visible enough and still lead to conflicts
  • We need more reviewers for certain tasks or certain subsystems, ideally more than two people (to break the tie when there are technical disagreements) and from more than one party (to avoid bias). I don't think it's a good idea to always escalate these to TSC, because not all of us are interested in or familiar with the same part of the code base, and so we don't always get the attention we ask for if the disagreement involves substantial amount of reading or context. Maybe a team + CODEOWNERS structure can help
  • When the change involves substantial amount of work, maybe starting a design doc first to seek high-level and more abstract inputs before jumping in to do the actual implementation would be a good idea. I can see this may be a double edged sword but this works relatively well in V8 (though sometimes prototyping is still necessary to keep the technical discussion realistic)

(Not sure if I can make it at 5am, but @jasnell and @addaleax can also explain about the context and start the discussion)

[MylesBorins]

Nothing new to add for modules this week

[mhdawson]

PR for minutes: #870

[jasnell]

Sorry that I was unable to make the call today to discuss the snapshot issue. Let's please keep it on the agenda for next week and discuss then