[Bf-committers] Wiki acct request to help w/ 2.8 documentation

Mon Oct 30 15:51:22 CET 2017

Hi Dalai,

If you think the best way to start helping out in 2.8 is to move straight
into coding tasks already, then I'll go ahead and jump in :)

As far as documentation is concerned, the main thing that's helpful for new
features (in terms of developer efficiency) is solid requirements docs.
Admittedly, half the information I've struggled to understand personally
just from perusing our wiki or phabricator is probably somewhere out
there...  Just would be much easier if contributors had a single place we
can look (I thought this would be phabricator) to understand very quickly -
for feature A, this is how it "should" work, etc. Otherwise, part-timers
end up losing a lot of precious dev time doing requirements gathering /
searching through diff histories, etc...  and if there's a bug that impacts
another feature, etc. - it takes a lot of time to understand if it's
actually a bug or not if you have to search through the revision history to
see how it's supposed to work, etc.

Code design / data-model docs are always an after thought in every software
project I've seen haha - and I agree that it's not always helpful to have
very detailed code-design docs anyhow when the code is changing very fast
from one month to the next... but I'll do my best to at least start
documenting feature requirements for anything I work on moving forward in a
Google Doc I can share with you guys.  I only suggested the wiki b.c. I
thought it served the same purpose (assuming there are different
user-specific permissions for different docs, etc).  I just don't think
part-timers who are working on implementing features are going to be able
to produce great requirement docs for contributors at the same time.

On the topic of the possible tasks you mentioned though - I'd really like
to start out with a couple of them in parallel if that's OK - that way, if
I'm blocked for whatever reason on one feature, I can work on another until
I get feedback,etc.... plus that VSE one sounds interesting :D  For T53158,
I see you are the author so I'll reach out to you in IRC / email about any
questions... but for the RNA properties porting, is there a task on
phabricator I can look at  who can I reach out to about helping w/ the port
of the RNA properties?

Thanks again for your help, man - Blender is totally the most
wicked-awesome open-source project out there today and it's future is
looking really bright thanks to all the effort you guys & the community put
into it!

Cheers,
Danrae

On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 7:22 AM, Dalai Felinto <dfelinto at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Danrae,
>
> If you want to get involved, why not starting coding? There are room
> for all levels of coding contributions.
>
> From mundane upcoming task-forces (helping port rna properties to the
> static override system, modifiers to the new copy-on-write depsgraph,
> ...).
> All the way to more challenging ones like support for multiple-window
> and offline rendering of OpenGL engines.
> Including simple missing features such as Video Sequencer scene strip
> drawing settings (T53158).
>
> So I don't think lack of documentation is what is preventing other
> developers to help out, really.
>
> That said solid document is always welcome. But in this case could you
> show your previous documentation work so I could look at?
> Or even, draft your contributions elsewhere (google docs?) before we
> see where and how they would fit in the wiki?
>
> And for your specific questions about collections evaluation, take a
> look at D2878.
>
> Thanks,
> Dalai
> --
> blendernetwork.org/dalai-felinto
> www.dalaifelinto.com
>
>
> 2017-10-28 16:54 GMT-02:00 spock theGray <blink.ornitier at gmail.com>:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > Super stoked about 2.8 happenings and how it's looking so far!
> >
> > tldr; I wanted to start helping w/ 2.8 development, but I think starting
> > out - it'd be better if I helped out w/ documentation & testing (fun
> story
> > below lol).  I was looking at the wiki "Writer Guide" (
> > https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Meta:Guides/Writer_Guide) and it
> looks
> > like I need to email this list to get a wiki account to be able to help
> out
> > w/ docs.
> >
> > I think we really could use some more detailed requirements docs for
> > features which already have fairly well defined requirements and are at
> > least partially implemented... The documents can change as requirements
> > change, and it's also be something that can be written in a way that can
> > translate fairly well into end-user documentation as 2.8 gets closer to
> > release.  I'd also like to start helping w/ code-design + data-layer
> > documentation - this will help me understand how these features work at
> the
> > code-level so I can take on dev tasks in the future, but documenting it
> in
> > more detail will also help other devs who want to contribute in the
> future.
> >
> > As an example of why we REALLY need better docs for devs to help out,
> > here's my recent experience looking at the current implementation of
> > collections in 2.8:
> >
> > 1. Build / run 2.8 branch.  Add a sphere to the default scene so you have
> > two mesh objects - a sphere and a cube.
> > 2. Create two new collections "A" and "B".  Move the cube to collection A
> > and move the sphere to collection B.
> > 3. Toggle the visibility of collection A - Cube disappears.  Toggle
> > visibility of collection B - Sphere disappears.
> > 4. Now add the sphere to collection A and the cube to collection B so
> both
> > collections have the cube & sphere in them.
> > 5. Toggling A's visibility does not change the viewport drawing (objects
> > are still drawn) but toggling B's visibility has both objects
> > disappearing...
> >
> > Is this a bug?  Is it by design? Who the heck knows lol?  To try to
> > understand how collection visibility "should" work (design intent), I
> > looked:
> >
> > - Here: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.8/Source/
> LayersCollections
> > - And Here: https://developer.blender.org/project/view/74/
> > - And Here: https://code.blender.org/2017/09/view-layers-and-
> collections/
> > - And Here: https://code.blender.org/2017/10/blender-2-8-design-
> document/
> >
> > ...and a couple of IRC channels - nobody outside the core dev team seems
> to
> > know anything about 2.8 lol...
> >
> > So, I'm hoping to start out helping on 2.8 these next few months by
> > documenting the hell out of what's been developed to-date in 2.8, how
> it's
> > supposed to work (also from user's perspective), how it actually
> currently
> > works and what's left to do (wrt features whose requirements are
> > well-defined enough).
> >
> > Can I get a Blender wiki acct. for this?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Danrae
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bf-committers mailing list
> > Bf-committers at blender.org
> > https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
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