Minutes from 113th OpenVDB TSC meeting, November 16th, 2021, (EDT)

Attendees: *Jeff* L., *Andre* P., *Nick* A., *Dan* B., *Rich* J.

Additional Attendees: JT Nelson (Blender), Johannes Meng (Intel)

Regrets: *Ken* M.

Agenda:

1) Confirm Quorum
2) Secretary
3) Forum
4) Explicit Template Instantiation
5) 8.2 Release
6) 9.1 Release
7) CI ccache
8) PR Updates
9) Next meeting


1) Confirm Quorum

Quorum is present.

2) Secretary

Secretary is Nick Avramoussis.

3) Forum

Issue No.1127 - Bug has been reported and verifies in Tree::combineExtended
which isn't correctly respecting the result of active states when a destination
tile overlaps a source child node. Nick has fixed, PR #1247.

Issue No.1250 - Debian issue regarding blosc. Has been reported as part of v9
but nothing has changed regarding blosc in v9. Needs more information.

4) Explicit Template Instantiation

Dan, struggling to reproduce the issues that have been reported. Both Ken and
Jeff have reported problems, Ken on MacOS, Jeff with Houdini builds. Jeff to
feedback to Dan with reproducible steps. Note that switching ETI off still
works.

5) 8.2 Release

We always support the previous two ABIs so we can't (or shouldn't) really release
off master. A v8.2 branch was created for this purpose. Nick, we want EXT 3, TBB
2021 and Houdini SOP changes in 8.2. Rich, some extrapolate SOP changes missing.
Andre to take a look and do the 8.2 release, aiming for end of week.

6) 9.1 Release

Dan, note that a ABI 10 experimental define exists so we can start on ABI 10
features. A discussion arose regarding unique VDB version identifiers as we
currently increment the minor or patch version after release but then sometimes
end up releasing the exact same version. This has the effect that anyone who
checks out VDB between two releases gets the version number of the second
release. Ideally we'd want some kind of unique version identifier for each
build. Nick, we could add the git SHA to the version for any "dev" (non
official release) of VDB. Jeff, this would be useful for Houdini to track where
VDB was built from. Dan, this would break ccache as the header would change.
Could embed into an object file or patch the header after build. Worth
investigating what other projects do. 9.1. most likely to be the next release.

7) CI ccache

Dan, ccache dramatically reduces build times at the cost of a 700mb cache that
is posted on complete workflow runs. Clarified that, because the timestamp is
part of the cache, even if nothing changes a branch new cache of the same size
is always posted on a complete rebuild. It's theoretically possible for the
Houdini install to fall out of the cache but we'll cross that bridge when we
come to it. Dan, ccache will delete anything from the cache that hasn't been
touched in a certain period (24hr).

8) PR Updates

Nick, Point Stats PR merged. Note that std::numeric_limits is broken for VDB
math types. We need to fix this but this PR doesn't use it. Will work on the
surfacing PR.

Nick to redo documentation PR and ask Dan to take a look.

9) Next meeting

Next meeting is November 23rd, 2021. 1pm-2pm EST (GMT-5).
