[Bf-committers] Re: [Bf-blender-cvs] CVS commit: blender/source/blender/blenkernel/intern customdata.c blender/source/blender/python/api2_2x Mesh.c

[Alexander Ewering]

On Fri, 24 Nov 2006, Campbell Barton wrote:

> if you follow the PyAPI there are a steady number of changed between 
> releases. - though these are useually only effect a small number of scripts. 
> - This is by no means a bit change.
>
> If the API was more stable to begin with then we would probably avoid these 
> breaks, but there are issues with the API that need resolving.
>
> Nobody takes the API seriously? - In practice its easy to maintain scripts 
> between releases.

That's not the point though. As a user, I download a script from the net,
and I expect it to work, and I don't expect it to break just because I
*upgrade* my host package.

Imagine that with every new minor GCC version, Blender would stop compiling
because just a few things about the "C API" had changed. A good example
would be that the standard C library suddenly dropped sprintf() in favor of
snprintf() ("because it's more secure"). Well, you'd just have to change 905

intrr at time:~/bf-cvs/blender$ egrep -rIi sprintf *|grep \.c|wc -l
905

places in the source (very potentially introducing new bugs) just because
the "C maintainer" decided something over the heads of the developers.

Or just imagine that when Microsoft introduces Windows Vista, half of all
windows programs stop working because they drop half of their API, etc...

Sorry, it just doesn't work. Python scripts are so frustrating in Blender
that I changed "Python error - check console" to "Yo momma told ya not to
use Python scripts!" just so that I can laugh instead of cry each time this
dialog pops up.

| alexander ewering              instinctive mediaworks
| xx-mail.com/instinctive     http://www.instinctive.de