Airflow 3.x Dev Call: Meeting notes

The dev calls are open for anyone in the community to join and help in the Airflow 3 efforts. 

Schedule: Fortnightly (once in 2 weeks) on Thursday at 4pm GMT/UTC

Table of Contents

• 8 May 2025
  • Proposed Agenda
  • Attendees
  • Summary
• 22 May 2025
  • Proposed Agenda
  • Attendees
  • Summary
• 5 June 2025
  • Proposed Agenda
  • Attendees
  • Summary
• 26 June 2025
  • Proposed Agenda
  • Attendees
  • Summary
• 3 July 2025
  • Proposed Agenda
  • Attendees
  • Summary
• 17 July 2025
  • Proposed Agenda
  • Attendees
  • Summary
• 31 July 2025
  • Proposed Agenda

3 July 2025

Proposed Agenda

Attendees

Summary

• Catch-up on action items from last call:
  • None
• Development updates and presentations: 
  • Airflow 3 adoption (Vikram)
    • Vikram shared that the download numbers show encouraging signs of 3.0 adoption, with about 12% of all downloads for the last month being for 3.0 placing it in third place, with 2.10 in the lead with 29% and 2.6 (still puzzling) in second place with 16%.  
    • Vikram also noted that 2.11 which was released after 3.0 is at 5% of downloads, which showed that more people were willing to go to 3.0 directly from earlier 2.x versions. 
    • Jens noted that it was still a very good thing that we had released 2.11, since 5% of people had upgraded to it from earlier 2.x versions, presumably because they were not yet ready to upgrade to 3.0. 
    • The team noted that for several organizations there were a couple of functional gaps, notably UI Plugins and "run as user" which blocked the upgrade to 3.0. Amogh responded that "run as user" is available as part of Airflow 3.0.3.
    • Vikram noted that the two big known gaps i.e. UI plugins and Deadline Alerts are targeted for the 3.1 release.
    • The team noted that we should make an effort to clean up any such small blockers in the 3.1 release. 
    • The ask for the community is to please highlight such gaps encountered in the dev list or the Airflow 3 dev slack channel. 
  • CLI update (Bugra)
    • Bugra walked through the Github project for this AIP as well as the current status of the work. 
    • Bugra stated that the project would be ready to be integrated into the release process in a couple of weeks.
    • Bugra also volunteered to help in the release process as needed. Jarek pointed out that some additional work may be needed around tests as part of getting ready for release. 
  • Airflow 3.1 update (Vikram)
    • Vikram shared the overall scope and timing of the Airflow 3.1 release as documented on the wiki page. 
    • The one area of significant discussion was the Human in the loop as detailed below.
• Discussion topics:
  • Human in the loop
    • Jens started the discussion here by pushing for the Human in the loop feature to be built and released as a separate provider, not within the standard provider package.
    • Kaxil vocally advocated for this to be in Core Airflow for simplicity and walked through the initial PR created by Wei to illustrate his rationale. 
    • Jarek vehemently agreed with Kaxil. 
    • Pierre also agreed with Kaxil, saying that he would prefer UI plugins to be only used by users, not by us as Airflow contributors. 
    • This then led to the discussion that we have gone too far with the Provider separation from Core Airflow. Jed brought up the point that he would like to get the Executors out of the Providers into a different package. 
    • The discussion ended with the decision to make the "core" Human in the loop functionality as part of Core Airflow. 
  • Code sharing discussion (Ash)
    • The prior discussion also led to the code sharing discussion between Task SDK and Core Airflow, following the thread brought up by Ash in the dev list. 
    • This was a great discussion with a lot of participation from everyone on the call. 
    • Ash to summarize this.

17 July 2025

Proposed Agenda

Attendees

Summary

• Catch-up on action items from last call:
  • None
• Development Updates
  • UI Plugins Update (Pierre and Brent)
    • Pierre shared that the React plugins implementation is nearly complete, including embedded web applications now working inside the Airflow UI. 
    • Pierre also said that key technical challenges have been resolved including react library sharing between plugins and Airflow Core.
    • Pierre raised one issue which had been open about where to keep the CLI/Python scripts to bootstrap React project. Based on team feedback, it was resolved to have those live within dev-tools. 
    • Brent gave a quick demo of the React plugins working in the Airflow UI
    • Outstanding work on this stream before the 3.1 release includes documentation and examples to demonstrate both iFrame and React app integration, as well as CSS fine-tuning for wider screen layouts. 
  • Task SDK Update (Kaxil, Ash, and Amogh)
    • Kaxil shared that multiple parallel work streams are active right now for this AIP
    • Ash is prototyping the common object sharing approaches (symlink vs. rendering). 
    • Utility code migration is happening based on that to appropriate locations (task SDK vs. shared). Serialization structure changes are also being done to support this. 
    • The Core Operator cleanup is happening, largely based on TP's work. Base Operator is now removed from Airflow models. Similar removal planned for Map operator and other core Operators. 
    • Branch Operator bug identified and is being addressed. 
  • Python 3.13 (Jarek)
    • Jarek shared that Python 3.13 is now available for all users and gave a quick demo of the same. 
    • Jarek also said that the Flask Application Builder (FAB) dependency has now been moved and a truly FAB-less Python 3.13 deployment is possible. 
    • Jarek also shared that Python 3.13 fixed a long-standing file description duplication bug. This bug could explain the recent "too many files open" issues in supervisor tasks. 
  • Deadline Alerts Update (Ramit and Rajesh)
    • Ramit shared that he had done performance testing on different approaches using a standalone Python script on Postgres, with 10 million rows. 
    • He tested 3 approaches: Two separate tables, view-based single table, and indexed single table. 
    • The index approach (state + deadline time) had the best performance and therefore led to the implementation approach of adding a state column to the deadlines tables. 
    • Ramit also shared that async callbacks would be run on the triggerer and synchronous callbacks on the workers. 
    • Rajesh shared that the deadline detection code is nearly complete, with the Slack and SMTP notifiers being implemented as async functions. Documentation is also in progress, with an estimated dev completion in about 2 weeks. 
    • There were questions around performance considerations and running under scale. 
• Discussion Topics
  • Airflow 3 adoption blockers
    • Vikram started the discussion with the commonly raised blockers that he had seen or been asked about:
    • Changes in imports: Vikram said that there seemed to be a significant lack of awareness of the upgrade utilities and the upgrade guide. Pavan chimed in saying that he had seen this too. There was some discussion about how to highlight this better on the docs site or in the UI, without a clear resolution. 
    • Missing UI elements such as UI filters: Brent chimed in saying that these have been identified as Github issues and are in the process of getting resolved. Brent also asked for community help here. 
    • Database size causing long migration times, due to long database upgrade times: Again, something covered in the upgrade guide, with the recommendation to clean up the database before upgrade. 
    • Vikram also said that he has been using the "affected_version:3.0" issue tag to track adoption issues and then with priority. 
    • The ask for the community is to "self-assign" adoption issues before the next meeting.
• Action Items
  • Pierre: Continue React plugin dev tools development
  • Brent: React package requirements optimization after vacation
  • Jarek: Investigate file description issue workarounds for pre-3.13
  • Dennis and Ramit: Finalize deadline alerts implementation
  • Kaxil, et al: Continue TaskSDK / shared code changes
  • Vikram: Clean up the Airflow 3.1 wiki structure and add Augusto Hidalgo to discuss Benchmark updates to next dev call. 
  • Community: Create, tag, and self-assign (if possible) Airflow 3 adoption issues before next dev call

31 July 2025

Proposed Agenda