[Bf-committers] Meeting minutes

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

0) Previous week report, from Blender Conference meeting

- Blender 2.5 "beta 0" naming still has some pro/contra discussions... 
in some aspects it's more like an alpha. Everyone agrees it has to be 
communicated as a test build when released.

- Beta0 targets: Python api is ready for exporters, importers work for 
mesh. Collada might be in as a target. Game Engine is nearly restored 
and ready for test.

- Default .blend test suite needs update, action required still!

- Crucial is to get the todo list well communicating for the "release 
log".
   http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5/Todo

- Everyone looks forward having the old bugtracker upgraded, like with 
redmine.
   http://rm.letworyinteractive.com/

- To welcome and support new developers, proposal is to make special 
(weekly) Q&A sessions online for developers. Campbell will announce and 
coordinate. Several ideas for welcoming and attracting new developers 
were discussed (tutorials, templates, irc search bot, online workshops, 
sprints in blender institute), clearly an important topic.

- Target 1 for Blender Foundation this year: implement better project 
management, with more clear modules, module owners, and rights of 
module teams to add developers or accept patches. Maybe even split up 
mailing lists for commits based on this.

- Target 2: find funding for (half time?) hired development support. We 
have too much backlog work on maintenance, documentation, website logs, 
patch reviewing, etc.


1) Current projects

- Goo & slime tests: http://pfs.planetblender.org/

- Martin experimented with smarter button-value-sliding, proposal 
follows.
   (similar to http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini10.0/basics/ladder )

- Collada project: being integrated in trunk now. Main issue is get the 
build environment work for new dependencies.

- Martin puts back the autotest-suite on the agenda, especially for 
graphics correctness of UI. Unless someone else is interested, he'll 
give it a try.

2) 2.5 project planning

- Further planning & updating will be in wiki... todo section.

- It's Matt's first week! He will be in charge of the wiki 
communication too.
   (We have a sponsor paying Matt for full-time coding work, to wrap up 
2.5 project).

- Thomas Dinges likes to finish UI for nodes before first beta build

- Blender WindowManager crashes a lot currently with opening/closing 
windows... ton will check

- Next sunday we'll review reports sofar and decide on testbuild 
"beta0".

3) Durian

- Brecht + Nicholas started on Sculpt branch, speedup and memory 
optimizing.

- Campbell works with Nathan on python rigging API, for creation of 
automatic rigged characters.




-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands