Hey everyone, I'm not a decision-maker on this obviously, but I have been following the discussion with interest. I asked this on blender.chat, but I think it was after a lot of people had signed off.
In short, it occurs to me that Blender's LTS releases are meant for the same studio-centric userbase that the VFX Platform specifications are intended. Would it be possible to be more adherent to the VFX Platform for those releases, but allow a somewhat less constrained development environment for non-LTS releases? Updates to the LTS releases would still use the VFX Platform specs from the initial year of release, so there's no weird scenario of getting a two-year old bugfix LTS release to align with the current VFX platform. Is that possible? Does it create a lot of overhead that I'm just ignorant about? And if it's not possible, then who are the LTS releases intended for? My apologies if the question sounds overly basic, but a bit of clarification here would certainly be appreciated. -Jason On January 20, 2022 2:40:10 PM EST, Scott Wilson via Bf-committers <bf-committers@blender.org> wrote: >I'm sort of out of the loop, but has there been communications with the VFX >Reference Platform recently? I think that some of the issues brought up >such as build flags for OpenVDB could be resolved. I know that as a >pipeline TD in a studio, having all of the vendors on the same page about >all attributes of the build environment makes my life much easier. So, I >throw what little say I have into getting Blender and the platform aligned. > >On Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:22 AM Ray Molenkamp via Bf-committers < >bf-committers@blender.org> wrote: > >> While I do not mind the practical nuts and bolts of this >> proposal at all, I do mind the language, referring to the >> VFX Platform as something worth looking at regarding file >> or platform compatibility is unfortunate. >> >> The Platform as is makes no attempt to manage file compatibility >> throughout the pipeline, the big-ticket items in this space such >> as USD and/or MaterialX aren't even in the platform, the things >> that are in the platform, such as OpenVDB that have _severe_ >> file compat issues if build incorrectly do not even have a footnote >> about it. The only logical conclusion here is, the VFX Platform >> is a not authority to appeal to regarding file compatibility, so >> best not to. >> >> As for platform compatibility, the messaging in the VFX Platform >> is confusing, for linux it declares a glibc version, for macOS it >> declares a deployment target, so far so good, but then for windows >> it does none of these things, and just recommends a compiler and SDK of >> which neither determine the OS versions the resulting code can >> run on, the inclusion of python 3.9 indirectly implies windows 8.1 >> is their minimum windows deployment target, but honestly I'm unsure >> if even they are aware of this implication. >> >> I'd like to see the proposal move more into concrete direction: >> >> > Blender does NOT follow the VFX platform. >> > >> > - Blender aims be compatible with operating systems VFX Platform >> compatible software will be able run on. >> > - blender aims not to break file compatibility for 3rd party formats >> such as EXR, VDB, Alembic: files exported from Blender should be usable in >> other software used in the pipeline, and vice-versa. >> >> The last item >> >> > - Not to break external render engines >> >> Is just not something I think we can we can practically commit to, >> these are generally linked directly to the python shared libs, >> and bumping python versions will definitely break most if not all >> of them. >> >> To put an end to having to have this conversation every year, I'd >> like to break the loop with the following text: >> >> > Major blender releases will ship with the latest major python version >> available during BCON1 in its development. >> >> My proposal >> >> - Clarifies our stance on the VFX Platform >> - Doesn't appeal to an authority the VFX Platform clearly lacks regarding >> file compat. >> - Somewhat commits to running on the same platforms as the VFX platform >> (as much as it can be deduced from the platform, they are vague about it, >> hard to make any solid commitments here). >> - Makes the python version blender will ship with predictable. >> >> Note that personally, I may or may not approve of the direction being >> taken here, but judging from your internal discussions this seems to be >> the way we want to go as a project, in which case clear language is >> undoubtedly better than vague commitments that sound nice but may >> set unrealistic expectations. >> >> --Ray >> _______________________________________________ >> Bf-committers mailing list >> Bf-committers@blender.org >> List details, subscription details or unsubscribe: >> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers >> >_______________________________________________ >Bf-committers mailing list >Bf-committers@blender.org >List details, subscription details or unsubscribe: >https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list Bf-committers@blender.org List details, subscription details or unsubscribe: https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
