Minutes from OpenVDB TSC meeting, May 7th, 2025

Attendees: *Ken* M., *Andre* P, *Dan* B.,  *Jeff* L., *Nick* A.

Additional Attendees: None

Regrets: *Richard* J., *Greg* H.

Also:

Jonathan Swartz (NVidia), Eric Powers (DWA)

Agenda:

1) Confirm quorum
2) Secretary
3) Meeting Times
4) OpenVDB Course
5) Github CI
6) Github Openvdb Org
7) Next meeting

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1) Confirm quorum

We have quorum.

2) Secretary

Secretary is Jeff Lait.

3) Meeting Times

We are going to have a bi-weekly at 1pm PST.  The alternate weeks will
be a 12pm PST overflow meeting only if needed.

4) OpenVDB Course

The course was accepted.  Requires copyright sign over.

Reviews were extremely positive.  Jeff Budsberg was specifically requested.

One of Nick or Richard will attend.  Likely cover anisotropic Surfacing.

We need find if Jeff Budsberg can cull out the sensitive material for
a presentation.

We need a confirmed order of presenters and times so the SIGGRAPH
website can have the times available for people to show up at the
right time.

5) CI

We got credentials for Amazon code build a month ago.  The action
didn't work, and the manual got very complicated quickly.  Now trying to
locate someone to figure this out.

6) Git Hub Org

Proposal is to take over the openvdb org on GitHub and use it to host
separate repos.  This allows us to have administrative rights to
create/archive repos; which we can't do inside of aswf.  The entire
structure remains legally part of ASWF.

The trigger was to find a place for all the FVDB contents to live.

Should AX have been in OpenVDB?   Our focus should be the core library?

Are these extra FVDB things part of FVDB core?   A segmentation of
pointclouds might bring in a lot of distinct sources.  They might also
target a specific version of FVDB.  So even if FVDB core was in this
org-repo, there still would be separate repos for the projects.

Where does example openvdb code for courses live?  We drop these into
the website, or ask for a repo for this purpose?  This organization
could be a place for this.  We get the autonomy to create repos for these.

What of unmaintained code?  How is the review process work for these?
The proposal was review rules are per-repo; so some repos may be very
light on review/maintaince.   It is believed that CLA/DCO would be
required across the board, however, to ensure we can move code without
hassle.

Considerable discussion on the merits of moving existing projects,
like AX, nanovdb, fvdb, mathematica bindings, houdini operators, out
of the core repo to this one.  Monolithic repos have issues where it
clouds the purpose and direction.  Github issues, etc, apply across
the whole repo, as do PRs.  On the other hand, a monolithic repo will
keep versions in sync by construction - you don't have to find the
right version of OpenVDB for your copy of NanoVDB as they both come
from the same source.  This is useful when things are tightly coupled.

Separate repos are useful when we know we will want to de-sync - for
example, a project of how to do segmentation might only have been
built against a particular fVDB version.  Keeping it in the main repo
requires constantly sweeping it; while having it separate will allow
it to just point to the last good build.

No decisions were made about moving existing directories.

Unaminous consent to take over openvdb org.

7) Next meeting

Agenda: Finalize SIGGRAPH course order and timings.

May 21st, 2025, 4pm EST.
