2021 10 25 Open NEST Developer Video Conference

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Agenda

1. Welcome
2. Review of NEST User Mailing List
3. Project team round
4. In-depth discussion
   • Docker (?),
   • NEST 3.2 (early)

Mailing list

• https://nest-simulator.org/mailinglist

Project team round

Here we discuss topics that need broader attention, for example questions that came up but are outside a single project's scope, larger planned changes/PRs that affect all teams or pending work that is blocked by external factors.

1. Models / NESTML

   • mostly bugfixing, now NESTML CI all green.
   • going for next major release with synapses (5.0)
   • ongoing work for delayed differential equations (for Clopath synapse)

2. PyNEST

   • nothing to report

3. Kernel

   • discussion ongoing regarding thread pinning
   • issue discovered in placing of spacial neurons in MPI setup

4. Installation

   • issue found in installation resolving relative paths, may be solved by adapting docs (awaiting user feedback)
   • nest reports its version different in some circumstances, need to split hash and semver separately
   • NEST on wheels mini-hackathon last Friday, got a working version, now cleaning up.

5. Infrastructure

   • nothing to report, planned mini-hackathon for refactoring test suite setup (tomorrow)

6. Documentation

   • looking for reviewers for #2165
   • pinning correctly needs to be better explained in the documentation

7. EBRAINS

   • nothing to report

8. (Feature) Automated Testing

   • no report

9. (Feature) Extension Module System

   • no report

In-depth discussion

NEST early release

• some changes in documentation required for more obvious 2-to-3 transition
• issue found with spacial neurons
  • explicit positions are stored on each MPI process (wastes memory)
  • new parametrization of random positions contains a bug (problem found, fix being implemented)
  • need to add many more tests for this
• wait for time based release in December vs. extra intermediate release
  • policy to point to releases vs. master branch
  • how to enumerate versions
  • how to generate authors list

=> discussion required on version numbering

• "Classic releases" with back ports?
• "bug fixes" -> successive version.

User perspective:

• NEST X.y is compatible for users scripts written for NEST X.z for all y > z.
• Major changes (new kernels, new interface, …) change major version

Developer perspective:

• maybe only retrospectively known when an major change is done.
• when in doubt increase major number?

Bring back dot-releases?

• for doc fixes
• for "non-changing" back-ports (no bug fixes)