Compiler Team Ambitions for 2022

Background

• In past years, we've often oscillated between planned and very unplanned team goals.

• Lots of great progress was made in 2021 but it was largely ad-hoc.

Beginnings

• In 2022, we wanted to be more organized :)

• Goals

  • Find out what contributors are working on
  • See if there are common themes between sets of contributors
  • Give the community an idea of what we're working on
  • Highlight ways the community can help
  • Showcase the growth & maturity of the project

Process

• Free-form thread on #t-compiler to "spitball areas for a 2022 roadmap"

• Felix & Wesley wrote up separate idea lists based on the feedback from the thread

• Consolidated lists into one document

• Engaged Compiler Team & Contributors

• Inside Rust blog post goes up tomorrow!

Lessons learned

• It always takes longer than you think it does.

• Setting deadlines was helpful but also important to realize they did not have to be immovable.

• Just having team members talk about what they hoped/planned to work on was very valuable.

Sneak peak

• Three main themes we identified for 2022:
  • Fulfill Rust's Promise (🦀)
  • Developer Delight (👩‍💻)
  • Contributor Workflow (🛠️)