[Bf-committers] S-DNA and Changes

[Leo Sutic]

Hi all,

I've now started to dig into the codebase - and the VSE in particular.
The workings seem fairly straightforward, but as far as changing things
I must ask your advice.

The "problem" is the S-DNA representation of the VSE data. The
structures used in the VSE, and also written to the blend file, are
strongly coupled to the current workings of the VSE. Not an
unsurmountable obstacle, but something which requires extra care when
changing things.

So, my question is this: How has this been handled historically? I can't
be the first one to run into this. For the sake of argument: Suppose I
want to make really big changes to the VSE - should I...

  1. Write a "VSE 2" and create all-new structures?

  2. Create some kind of "compatibility loader" or data import filter
that converts the old data to the new, as far as possible? That is, we
read old and new formats, but only write new format.

  3. Convert the old structs to the new in-memory? That is, we read and
write the old format, maybe with some back-compatible changes, but use a
new format internally?

/LS