[Development] v2.0.0 beta 0 release

[szha]

Hi MXNet community,

This discussion is about the MXNet 2.0's first beta release. This beta release is expected to be the first of the several beta releases before the official release of 2.0. In general, for each release follows a fixed cadence of a monthly update without stopping for minor issues.

In the first beta release, we include all the features listed in #18931 for the Python binding. Here are a few known blocking items to be addressed before the first beta release happens:

• Gluon 2.0 crash course update
• Turn on NumPy mode by default ([NumPy] turn on set_np #18631, merged in [2.0] Gluon2.0: switch to use forward interface #20262)
• Gluon 2.0 implementation updates Gluon 2.0 update in built-in blocks #19138 ([2.0] Gluon2.0: switch to use forward interface #20262)
• Open license issues and removal of DISCLAIMER-WIP.
• Dynamic loading of nvrtc (dynamic load libnvrtc.so #17858, PR in [FEATURE] Load libcuda with dlopen instead of dynamic linking #20484)
• Website 2.0 updates and document fixes Document issues to fix before 2.0 beta0 #19137 (PRs in [DOC][v2.0] Part1: Link Check #20487, [WIP][DOC][v2.0] Part2: Doctest #20488, [DOC][v2.0] Part3: Evaluate Notebooks #20490)

If you know of other issues such as critical bugs, please add here and I will track them. The release timeline will simply be upon the completion of these items.

[leezu]

In MXNet 1.x supports building a single libmxnet.so and use it on both CPU or GPU machines. This is not possible in MXNet 2 due to making nvrtc a required dependency and #17858 This can be a blocking issue for users moving from MXNet 1 to MXNet 2.

[leezu]

Another item may be the issue of test coverage. For example, #19082 reports that multi-threaded inference test-cases are missing due to refactor, but the feature is still included in MXNet and should be tested before release.

[fallahmad]

Hi MXNet community,

Any timeline update for MXNet 2.0.0 ? Is the master branch stable ? Can we use it to test new features ?

[troyliu0105]

@fallahmad I do think there is an eta... 😢

[leezu]

@fallahmad you can use the master branch. We intend to vote on an alpha release soon.

[fallahmad]

@troyliu0105 @leezu Thank you guys

[leezu]

For the release, it would be useful to review the disabled tests https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/search?q=mark.skip