[Bf-committers] Lack of coordination and communication in Blender development

[Mike Erwin]

Kai makes a good point.

Sometimes I'll see something new and think "cool, but why is today the
first time I'm hearing about this?!?" So I understand the impression of
things happening behind closed doors. When is the best time to share an
idea though? The second it's thought up or after working out the details?
At this point why not code it up to test how well the idea works? And once
the code is done, why bother presenting it as an "idea" or "design"? It
works, it's done!

>From the inside this seems like getting things done. From the outside it
seems like working behind closed doors. I'm really bad about this myself :)
but catch myself getting annoyed when other people do the exact same
things. I don't think anyone is *hiding* their work though. Just following
habits of not being actively open.

Even if an area will be "owned" by one or a few people, it's important to
have designs out in the open so everyone knows what's going on. Earlier is
better. Lots of comments surrounding any design will be nonsense -- or "input
of wildly varying levels of quality" as Martijn put it more politely. But
I'd rather sift through noise than seem to be working in secret. And it's
also important to document things that were *considered* but not chosen as
part of the final design. Broader documentation of decision-making
processes will reduce surprises and hopefully eliminate the impression that
core developers ignore the needs and ideas of others.

What is the proper forum for proposals and other design docs?
code.blender.org? wiki pages for work in progress? I see posts on
blenderartists and Twitter and G+, which seem "unofficial" but also reach
an audience that might not follow the mailing lists or hang out on IRC.

Great, now I suddenly have the urge to document my own stuff.

Mike Erwin
musician, naturalist, pixel pusher, hacker extraordinaire