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# System prepended metadata

title: Meeting notes

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# NetworkX Dispatch Meeting notes
Meeting link:   https://anaconda.zoom.us/j/94192874965?pwd=K0wvcmhXem41ZlVSQ2l4TXlUaDgxdz09
hackmd link:   https://hackmd.io/rqs_pWMxSLmICXCpI3w-Ug
Archived notes: https://github.com/networkx/archive/tree/main/meetings/dispatching


## January 08, 2025
    
Attendees: Rick Ratzel, Erik Welch, Anthony Mahanna
    
### Topics/Notes
    
- Leiden PRs ready to merge:
    - [PR 7743](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7743): Leiden funcs
    - [PR 7690](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7690): backend-only functions
    
- Allowing Graph constructors to be dispatchable
    - "can an ArangoDB graph (nx-adb Graph) be created internally when a user creates a nx.Graph()?"
    
    
## January 22, 2025
    
Attendees: Ralph Liu, Rick Ratzel, Aditi Juneja, Erik Welch
    
### Topics/Notes
    
- Future meeting: demo plugin hooks using profiler plugin (Erik)
    
- PRs
    - [PR 7768](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7768): Avoid repeated cache conversion failures
    - [PR 7765](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7765): WIP: add runtime hooks to dispatch system
        - Erik likes current structure; needs documentation
    - [PR 7760](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7760): Dispatch classes such as nx.Graph(backend=...)
        - Will show nx-cugraph and nx-arangodb using this (soon)
    - [PR 7602](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7602): Add _dispatchable._get_convert_kwargs method for more composability
    - (others?)
    
- Leiden PR - any open concerns?
    - [PR 7743](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7743): Leiden funcs
    
- Discussion on plugin hooks:
    - Should this topic be elevated to the general discussion?  For example, https://github.com/rapidsai/nx-cugraph/pull/57 could apply generally to NetworkX, so should it be part of NetworkX proper?
    
- Thoughts on refactoring the dispatching codebase? [issue 7787](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/issues/7787) and [7776](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7776)
    - Any overlap with what we want to see with the dispatching code and [spatch](https://github.com/scientific-python/spatch)?

    
## February 05, 2025
    
Attendees: Dan Schult, Mridul Seth, Rick Ratzel, Erik Welch, Ralph Liu
    
### Topics/Notes
    
- Mridul: We need user feedback on dispatching
    - Dan: How do we do that? Survey?
    - Mridul: Can NVIDIA help?
    - Erik: Add a link for feedback in the docs
    - Talk to existing cuGraph users
    - Erik has found examples on github (possibly students) where code includes setting the cugraph backend
    - Caltech group that Ross is part of is using community detection - can we get Ross to try dispatching?
        - Ross seems to use more explicit dispatch, he'd be a good candidate for feedback
    - Hypernetx users/devs would be good candidates
        - They've tried this and were successful getting it running, BC perf needed improvement
    
- Erik: what are the guidelines around using the `_adj` member?
    - Could be dangerous since it's read/write capable
    - Dan/Mridul: okay to use, just be careful
    - non `_` members are read-only views, more expensive
  
    
## February 19, 2025

Attendees: Rick Ratzel, Erik Welch, Ralph Liu
    
### Topics/Notes
    
- (no topics)
    
    
## February 25, 2025
    
Attendees: Rick Ratzel, Erik Welch, Ralph Liu, Anthony Mahanna
    
### Topics/Notes
    
- First meeting at the new time: Tuesdays at 10:30 Central

- Potential topics (for now or next time):
    - PRs to review
    - Tech debt and how to best work on reducing it
    - Upcoming conferences
    
- Conferences:
    - Pyconf Hyderabad 2025: https://github.com/Schefflera-Arboricola/pyconf_hyderabad_2025
    - PyData London
        - Erik, Aaron, Mridul planning on a talk
    - SciPy
        - NVIDIA will be submitting talks (Erik, Ralph, Rick)
            - Erik: dispatching, how to work on backends
            - Ralph, Rick: nx-cugraph use cases
    - Data Science Salon, NYC
        - https://www.datascience.salon/newyork/

- ArangoDB working on updating nx-arangodb to take advantage of new dispatchable Graph functions
    - add/remove nodes, etc.
    - current implementation that uses dictionary factories results in on API call per update
    
- installing backend(nx-parallel) after importing networkx --> does not update config (figured while creating demo for Pyconf Hyderabad)
    - reloading configs
    - functions like: `remove_backend`(removing it from the configs and ep) - helpful if setting configs for a backend might slow down the importing of networkx and the user doesn't even use that backend in their code, `update_backends`(or `reload_config`)   
- can we simplify installing backends for users inside(or via) networkx? --> like storing(and then later running) the install instructions in the `networkx.backend_info` ep? but the backend should be already installed to load the ep!
    - something like `nx.install_backend("backend_name")`
    
- Any new or interesting use cases for backends/dispatching?
    - integrations with LangChain
    - kuzudb integration
    
- CookieCutter backend (similar to Aditi's J4F) is something NX core devs have been asking for
    - Aditi suggested this could this be a good GSOC project(+ dispatching tutorial nb or gallery eg - for users), and that she, Dan, others could mentor.
    - [ToDo] Aditi mentioned she'd add this to the list of GSOC projects.
    
- Any updates needed to NX 3.5?
    - https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7768
    - Can we coordinate with Google Colab to have them update to 3.5 soon after it's released?
    - https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7760
    
- Notes on using nx-arangodb
    ```
    docker run --name arango -p 8529:8529 -e ARANGO_ROOT_PASSWORD=test arangodb/arangodb:3.12.4
    http://localhost:8529
    Username: root
    password: test
    Alternative: https://github.com/arangodb/adb-cloud-connector#readme
    Notebook Example: https://colab.research.google.com/github/arangodb/nx-arangodb/blob/main/doc/nx_arangodb.ipynb
    ```
    
## March 10, 2025
    
Attendees: Rick Ratzel, Ralph Liu
    
### Topics/Notes
    
- No topics, only Rick & Ralph showed up
    
    
## April 1, 2025
    
Attendees: Erik Welch, Rick Ratzel, Dan Schult
    
### Topics/Notes
    
- This is the first meeting using the new monthly meeting schedule.
- Dan kicked out "Warren's AI Notetaker" from the meeting and we had some discussion about it.
- Documentation update Q&A: https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7884
- Any needs for the 3.5 release?
  - Avoid repeated cache conversion failures [#7768](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7768)
  - Dispatch classes such as `nx.Graph(backend=...)` [#7760](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7760)?
    - See: https://github.com/rapidsai/nx-cugraph/pull/92
    - maybe not for 3.5
  - Add `_dispatchable._get_convert_kwargs` method for more composability [#7602](https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7602)?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better


## May 6, 2025

Attendees: Rick Ratzel, Erik Welch, Anthony Mahanna, Aditi Juneja

### Topics/Notes

- Dispatching Graph ctors (continued from last week's community call)
  - https://github.com/networkx/networkx/pull/7760
  - https://github.com/rapidsai/nx-cugraph/pull/92
  - [Aditi] Are there any concerns about this from the community call?
      - [Erik] Ross had some concerns about if it's necessary


## June 3, 2025

Attendees: Rick Ratzel, Akshita Sure

- Akshita Sure is working on nx-parallel, adding new algos to it for GSOC
  - Adding new embarassingly parallel algos first, then exploring non-embarassingly parallel algos
  - Initially looking at harmonic centrality, closeness centrality, triangle count
  - Attending the meeting to listen in on topics. Since there were only 2 attendees, the discussion became a basic overview of dispatching. However, poor connection quality made it hard for the attendees to understand each other.
  - Akshita will submit issues with questions as they come up. Ideally these are interpreted as requests for doc updates.


## July 1, 2025

Attendees: Rick Ratzel

- Rick waited for attendees for 15 minutes but nobody else attended.


## August 5, 2025

Attendees: Rick Ratzel (late), Ralph Liu (late)

- Rick and Ralph showed up 15 minutes late, nobody else was in attandance at that time.


## September 2, 2025

Attendees: Rick Ratzel

Erik Welch also showed up (at a different time?), and nobody was there. The calendar may be behaving oddly.


## October 7, 2025

Attendees: Erik Welch, Rick Ratzel

- Dispatching graph classes: Rick asked what backends need to do to take advantage of this. Erik mentioned backends just need to define a function (or method) named `graph__new__`
- Request from nx-neptune team (from a prior meeting, approx 2 weeks ago): take a look at the latest version of their docs.


## November 4, 2025

Attendees: Rick Ratzel

- Rick waited for attendees for 15 minutes but nobody else attended.


## December 2, 2025

Attendees: Anthony Mahanna, Rick Ratzel

- Rick & Anthony caught up. Anthony shared some of the latest relevant projects Arango has been involved with, specifically a txt2kg workflow.
- Anthony mentioned being excited to see nx-neptune released and wanted to take a look.
- Rick & Anthony both had meetings starting and had to leave early.


## February 2, 2026

Attendees: Erik Welch, Rick Ratzel

- https://github.com/rapidsai/nx-cugraph/pull/92
- Please try to add agenda items to the meeting notes before the meeting
- Time to submit the annual notes to networkx archive repo