Impact Framework Project Updates 2024-08-22

## Who

Sponsor: @jawache (GSF)
Product owner: @jmcook1186 (GSF)
Leads: @navveenb (Accenture), @srini1978 (Microsoft)

## Overview

We had folks on vacation over the past few weeks, but we still made some significant updates to IF.

We shipped a new release that includes our new "phased execution" process that allows you to separate the creation of input data, compute pipeline, and regrouping into distinct operations that you can execute independently - a greener and more reproducible way of using IF.

We also added a new parameter mapping feature that allows you to rename plugin inputs/outputs as part of the plugin's execution, avoiding the need for additional plugins to rename parameters. We fixed some minor bugs in our builtins, added new example manifests, updated the docs and added some new plugins for time conversions and accessing third party services, including Github and EcoCI.

I have been using IF to write manifest files for our repositories, including the GSF website, IF docs website and IF itself. This process yielded some important insights into where the main sources of friction are for real world IF applications, and as a result I've designed some new tasks for the coming fortnight that will tweak some IF behaviours. This includes reworking the `explain` feature, making some improvements to the way we handle time and thinking about inter-component operations.

Finally, we've started building an IF manifest visualizer -more on that soon!

Outside of the core development, we've been working hard on driving adoption, doing talks and presentations, onboarding sessions and connecting to users.

## Updates

Here's the links to more details about the most significant changes made over the last fortnight.

- [mapping inputs](https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/if/issues/820)
- [mapping outputs](https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/if/issues/972)
- [improve debug logs](https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/if/issues/968)
- [Github plugin](https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/if/issues/907)
- [EcoCI plugin](https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/if/issues/909)

## Issues

We have had a good fortnight, with no notable blockers.

## Outlook

- add inline arithmetic to IF manifests
- work on cross-component operations
- rework explain feature
- build manifest visualizer