[Bf-committers] IRC meeting minutes, january 9

Ton Roosendaal ton at blender.org
Mon Jan 10 12:14:40 CET 2005


Hi all,

Three main topics were discussed;

1) Review of 2.36 release

Linux release management
We need to establish a more solid procedure for how releases are built  
for linux. Of all platforms that seems to be the most difficult one (=  
making a binary with correct dynamic and static libs linked).
- Yann and DJ Capelis worked on a (downloadable) build tree for release  
compiling, would need to become 'official' in some way?
- Scons and Makefiles should create perfect release builds too... work  
todo.
- Stephen Swaney expressed interest to help out with this topic too.  
Since he's often available on irc he could be a good candidate for  
coordinating the efforts (e.g. become official Linux platform manager).  
Please note that in companies good "managers" let others do the work,  
eh!

If we can find 3-4 people being able to compile linux builds we're set  
I guess. :)

Further the release went relative smooth, although testing always seems  
to be the bottleneck... nothing beats doing actual releases for finding  
bugs!

2) Pending patches

- The "teac" (draw measurement info) patch from Campbell was cleaned  
and committed. Issue to be evaluated here is still interactivity  
modus... it now quite strictly complies to edge/face selection status,  
which cancels display while editing (for example 1 vertex). OTH, the  
convention to show values based on 1 vertex selected per edge/face too  
easily clutters the entire display. Especially angles suffer from  
unclear display.
My proposal is to leave it for now this way, and go for the best  
possible improvement; drawing (3D) rotated text. This might be possible  
with ftgl... anyone feels challenged to add that to our "ftfont"  
module? Or maybe devise a simple number-only font lib?

- New shader
Is already being included in tuhopuu for user-review. My note;  
hopefully we can evaluate addition of shaders in general, to prevent it  
being done on incidental basis... what more do we need to add, and is  
the total then satisfying and complete?

- Python patch(es)
Stephen confirmed the patches are being processed by python team. Ipo  
module still needs some re-work.

- Align Panel patch
Two reviews happened on ML, general conclusion is that the existing  
alignment feature already covers it (mostly), additional features could  
be added in "Snap to" menu.

- Patch tracker
With patches coming in more regular, the meeting proposes to reinstate  
the patch tracker on projects.blender.org. This is currently hidden for  
non-project members. The procedure then can be as following;
  - all patches should be submitted to tracker from now on
  - on submission, the tracker could send a mail to bf-committers to  
notify
  - discussions on the patch should be preferably done in the tracker.
That last point has the danger that discussions get too much split up,  
OTH this ML is getting too much mail anyway...

Decided was to wait for feedback on this proposal here, and decide next  
week.

3) New projects

- Transform
Martin confirms steady progress, in tuhopuu only still. Can become  
target for next release.

- Dependency graph
Jean-Luc is ready for first commit, needs decisions on how exactly to  
apply it. I proposed to first add it as replacement for the  
"sort_baselist()", so we can test hierarchies and tracking  
dependencies. With displaylist/animation-system/armature project  
pending we can later on decide how it further integrates best.

- Softbody
Jens Ole is ready for integrating with Blender as well. In wiki notes  
are on need for extra data structures for springs. Ton will join the  
efforts.
Pending issue: "start conditions" (initial forces/speeds) and how to  
incorporate frame-independent evaluation (introducing friction will  
make results only reliable on fixed step forward evaluation). Some kind  
of baking or pre-calculation schedule would be needed.

- 64 bits support
Mail about this topic here didn't result in feedback yet. Apparently  
its no hot topic really. I'm not in a rush either, were it not the very  
apparant marketing opportunity we get here. Vendors of 64 bits machines  
and OSes are dying for good apps to show off!
Most useful suggestion; get those vendors to sponsor devs with 64 bits  
machines and 8 Gig mem for testing. :)

- RVK proposal
Jean-Luc mentions Joeris proposal on simpler vertex key editing (maya  
style).
http://www.blender.org/modules.php? 
op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=5235

- Wire colors
Jean-Luc also reminded to this pending topic which should get a good  
proposal & implementation for next release. Ton promised to mail list  
idea as discussed with him in past. (and/or put in wiki)

- Render recode
(Not discussed in meeting, but worth notifying).
As already started during NaN days, further work on making Render a  
real module with API has been done... this is still unfinished,  
although adding threading support reveiled and solved quite some  
abusive globals.
Main "ugly" dependencies that exist still:
- usage of render code for preview-render in buttons
- same for displaylist, the "shaded drawmode"
- usage of texture code for particles (motion) and mesh tools (Noise)
Plus theres the very bad code still (thanks to unfinished ghost  
integration) for the render window.

On my long todo is writing architecture overview of render module...  
with proposals for further todos.

-Ton-


------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
http://www.blender.org



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