draft of post announcing rustc march sprint.

Author: pnkfelix

posts/inside-rust/2021-02-15-shrinkmem-rustc-sprint.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "March Sprint for rustc: Shrink Memory Usage"
+author: Felix Klock
+team: The Compiler Team <https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/compiler>
+---
+
+I am very excited about the compiler team's upcoming sprint, and
+I want to share that excitement with all of you.
+
+The Rust Compiler Team decided over a series of recent meetings
+([4 dec 2020][mtg-2020-12-04], [15 jan 2021][mtg-2021-01-15],
+[29 jan 2021][mtg-2021-01-29]) that our focus for 2021 will be improving the compiler's
+performance from the perspective of the new contributor experience bootstrapping
+the compiler and developing code for the compiler.
+
+The team's first sprint for 2021 will be during the first week of March, and its
+focus will be on reducing the memory footprint of the compiler during bootstrap.
+
+During our most recent planning meeting ([12 feb 2021][mtg-2021-02-12]),
+there were no new significant steering meeting proposals, so we decided to
+do some extra sprint planning during that time. We established:
+
+ * we should settle on a common set of tools for measuring memory usage (for now we expect it to be Valgrind DHAT on Linux).
+ * we need some centralized documentation for how to best use those tools to measure rustc's memory usage
+ * we need concrete proposals for tasks that will drive activity during the sprint; we started up
+   the [shrinkmem-sprint zulip][] to host conversations related to that.
+
+One detail about this sprint that differs a little from previous rust hacking sessions like "impl days":
+we are not actively trying to solicit new contributors during this time. (Of course new contributors are
+always welcome to join in the fun, but the compiler team recognized that we do not have as much mentoring
+bandwwidth for this first sprint compared to past "impl days" events.)
+
+[mtg-2020-12-04]: https://zulip-archive.rust-lang.org/238009tcompilermeetings/99285steeringmeeting20201204PerformanceGoalsfor2020.html
+
+[mtg-2021-01-15]: https://zulip-archive.rust-lang.org/238009tcompilermeetings/79391planningmeeting20210115.html
+
+[mtg-2021-01-29]: https://zulip-archive.rust-lang.org/238009tcompilermeetings/95022steeringmeeting20210129.html
+
+[mtg-2021-02-12]: https://zulip-archive.rust-lang.org/238009tcompilermeetings/44925planningmeeting20210212.html
+
+[shrinkmem-sprint zulip]: https://zulip-archive.rust-lang.org/276895tcompilershrinkmemsprint/index.html