Status Update December 2024/January 2025

[Mike Parker]

At the end of last year, Razvan Nitu moved from his role as a 
Pull Request and Issue Manager to the new Project Coordinator 
position. He is defining the role as he goes, but the primary 
objective is to keep track of the status of projects that our 
paid staff and core volunteers are working to complete. He checks 
in with everyone periodically to see what their progress looks 
like, if there are any problems, if they need any assistance, etc.

In Razvan's new role, he provides me with updates on the projects 
he's tracking. Once a month, I will post a status update to the 
forums.

I gave him a little time to settle into the role, so this first 
update covers December and January. From now on, I'll post 
updates in the first week of each month covering the month before.

## Projects

### Editions

Átila Neves got the DIP into a publishable state a while back. 
However, Timon subsequently raised some interesting points that 
Átila took some time to consider. The last update Razvan had was 
that the conversation was ongoing (though it may have been 
resolved by now). Átila thinks that once he and Timon settle 
their discussion, the DIP will be ready to submit. At that point, 
will need to find a champion to implement it.

### Phobos v3

Adam Wilson and Jonathan Davis have been porting modules from 
Phobos v2 to v3, fixing bugs and refactoring as appropriate. 
Jonathan has been focusing on porting `std.meta` and 
`std.traits`. Razvan understood the former to be complete and the 
latter was ongoing. Activity was somewhat quiet in December and 
Jonathan is busy with work. Additionally, they have encountered 
and fixed several bugs in both the library and the compiler. As 
such, progress is slow, but moving forward.

### New GC

Steven Schveighoffer has been preparing DRuntime for the 
inclusion of the new GC. By late January, he had gotten to a 
point where he had begun removing the dependency that GC 
functions have on `TypeInfo`. Things appear to be moving along 
nicely.

### Migrating dpldocs to a DLF server

In my summary of [the June 2024 monthly 
meeting](https://forum.dlang.org/post/ktmzuryniujwxidtlwso@forum.dlang.org), I reported that we had discussed the possibility of moving the contents of dpldocs.info, currently hosted by Adam Ruppe, to a DLF server, and that Adam had been supportive of the move when I reached out to him. This has almost been completed.

Vladimir Panteleev set up a container to host the dpldocs app. 
I've set up a DNS entry for dpldocs.dlang.org, though the server 
hasn't yet been configured to point to the app (it's showing a 
mirror of the dub registry as I write). Once Vladimir has the 
server configured, Adam will start redirecting requests from 
dpldocs.info and we can update code.dlang.org.

### Bugzilla to GitHub

Most of the active D community is surely aware by now that we 
finally got the Bugzilla to GitHub migration over the finish 
line. Thanks to Robert Schadek for making it happen. Razvan said 
there are still some kinks to straighten out, but we can consider 
this one complete.

### GSoC application

Razvan has been working closely with Teodor Dutu to get our GSoC 
application in tip-top shape this year. They've been able to gain 
some insights that we've lacked in the past. Additionally, the 
GSoC team sent a message to the organizations last year that 
provided some helpful information. With that, we're hopeful we'll 
have a better chance this time.

The application is complete and ready for submission. Given 
numerous issues Razvan and Teodor identified with [our 
project-ideas](https://github.com/dlang/project-ideas) 
repository, [they've created a repository specifically for 
GSoC](https://github.com/dlang/GSoC). Now they need to populate 
it.

Razvan has contacted multiple potential mentors and [published a 
forum 
post](https://forum.dlang.org/post/ciqjndpswhjksyvbanqr@forum.dlang.org) asking for more project ideas. He has a list of a few already, but it couldn't hurt to consider a few more. If you have any suggestions, please reply to his post ASAP. The application deadline is February 11.

### DConf '25

Planning for DConf '25 began at the end of November. At the 
moment, I'm waiting for confirmation that the contract has been 
signed. We're tentatively back in August this year. I don't 
expect any issues with the contract signing, but I don't want to 
announce the dates until it's all locked in. When it is, I'll put 
out a call for submissions and start working on the homepage. I 
expect I'll be able to open early-bird registration at the end of 
this month, early March at the latest.

### The DLF YouTube channel

One of my goals for 2025 is to grow our YouTube channel. That's a 
more effective vehicle for us than the blog. Consistent 
publishing is one of the fundamentals of growing a YouTube 
channel. Unfortunately, we don't have enough content to publish 
consistently at the frequency I would like.

To help with that, I'm stretching out the publication of the 
DConf '24 videos. I've rushed to get them out in the past. In the 
end, I almost burned out, we had a lot of views in a short 
period, and then the views tanked. By stretching them out across 
the next few months, we can have a steady number of uploads and 
continuous views.

If you need to refer to any of the talks in the interim, the 
three livestreams from last year all have proper chapters now so 
you can more easily find the talk you're interested in. I've 
[updated the homepage](https://dconf.org/2024/index.html) so that 
each talk has a link pointing to the appropriate timecode in the 
livestream. I'll replace these as I upload each video.

I will continue publishing entries in the Community Conversations 
series, though I'll be scaling back to every other month. I'll 
put up the first one of the year on the last Sunday of this month.

I want to get started on uploading a tutorial series, but I just 
can't make the time for it right now. I'm hoping to publish some 
community-created content this year. If you're interested in 
contributing to our YouTube channel, please reach out so we can 
discuss the details.

### Meeting summaries

I'm in the process of catching up on the meeting summaries. I 
expect to be back on track next month. At that point, I'll post 
the monthly summaries one month after each meeting, just before 
the next meeting, and the quarterly summaries before the last 
week of the month in which the quarterly was held.

## Help Wanted

No matter how much we do, there's always more that needs to be 
done. Whether it's fixing bugs, helping move a project forward, 
plugging a hole in the ecosystem, or one of the myriad tasks that 
eat up time, we could always use extra help. If you're willing to 
contribute a little time now and then to assist with pushing D 
forward, please reach out to me or Razvan. It is helpful to have 
a few volunteers "on call", ready to step in to help with a task 
that matches their abilities and motivations.