Firedrake meeting 2021 07 21

Date and time 2021-07-21 15:00UTC (16:00BST)

Action Items

Pick Chair and Minuter.
ALL: (ongoing) triage the open issues and confirm if they are indeed still open (and perhaps provide labels)
(JB, DH, KS, JW): Firedrake training happening 23rd August, update
DH: Firedrake 2021 update

Present: DH, MG, JB, NB, RNH, RK, KS, CW

Apologies: SV, LM

There are already quite a few people registered so attendance is likely to be high. How many people can we actually give assistance to?

(RNH) Since it's free lots of people might not actually show up.
(DH) Maybe ~100 people. Zoom limit is 300 so won't be an issue.
(DH) JW has checked and fixed the tutorials. DH to check that notebooks work.
(KS) Has managed to get install to Archer working. Observed that Firedrake hangs for more complex problems.
(CW) Keith Roberts has been having hanging issues for a while. Might be related.
(DH) Poisson in a for loop keeps overwriting variables. This could trigger unsafe PETSc destructors. Could try disabling generational garbage collector to avoid this bug. Possible solutions to this include:
- Remove all cyclical references from Firedrake (esp. PyOP2) (see issue)
- Have petsc4py objects register to be destructed
- Establish a global registry of Python objects so none of them ever die (massive memory leak)

(DH) Webpage ready but registration stalled by payment issues. Gather town also set up.
(NB) File size upload limit for posters. Need to check if it is a problem.
(RNH) We still need prizes and a tech support system.
(DH) Prizes can be mailed directly to winners. Tech support can be deferred for now.