[Bf-committers] Understanding the dev process

[Campbell Barton]

Hi Nathan,

For things that go well, I like that we try to keep on top of the
issue tracker between releases and generally take user reports
seriously and try to resolve them.
There isn't so much bureaucracy that it stifles progress, and we can
keep most discussion in the open (on developer.blender.org).


Regarding areas to improve on:

Over the last year I've been noticing the trade-off between online
interaction and doing my own development:

- Communication / design tasks / patch-review.
- Focusing on own development targets & bug-fixing.

For example, just going over all items in my in-box from the day
before and replying to any that need some attention can take up 1/4 to
1/2 a day (sometimes issues raised there are pressing things to
address, so that's fine)... On the other hand, this takes away from my
original plans.


Patch Review
============

One area I'd like to improve on, is handling patches, especially to
avoid good quality work slipping through the cracks.

Perhaps we can assign promising patches to review each release cycle
(as part of per module tasks - see T63725).


General Pain Points
===================

We discussed this during the code quest IIRC, mentioning here for completeness.

There are areas we really should spend time on but they don't get much
attention because they aren't bugs or glaring errors.

Examples of this are...

- Asset manager.
- Keymap editor.
- Undo system.
... could list others, these are obvious ones though ...

Instead of waiting years for large rewrites (2.5x, 2.8x), I think it
would be good to have developers take time away from regular bug
fixing and maintenance and focus on improving areas we know have a lot
of room for improvement which users would benefit from.


Who are we making Blender for?
==============================

With 2.8x and the introduction of tools,
it strikes me that artists at the Blender Institute are not using it much
(just my impression, maybe this changes over time).

And we're having to design Blender with two parallel interaction
methods which aren't totally compatible.

In design discussions it's come up that we can't use artists in the
studio as a test case because they don't really use the new tool
system.
This begs the question of who are our target users?
Who do we ask for feedback?

This topic probably goes outside the scope of this thread,
as I see it - it boils down to needing users (artist stakeholders,
part of the module team), who are users that can test & validate
designs for how 2.8x evolves.


On Thu, Jul 4, 2019 at 11:38 PM Nathan Letwory <jesterking at letwory.net> wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
> As you all may know by now I've been asked to help coordinate and manage
> the Blender development.
>
> To get a better understanding of what these days is going on, and to
> prevent me from just acting through my personal preferences, I'd like to
> hear from the blender developer community how they see the current dev
> process.
>
> I'm most interested in finding out how devs perceive the process: what goes
> well, and even more so what causes trouble.
>
> An open discussion by anyone on this topic is of course welcome, but I'd
> like (and also a bit expect) input at least from those who are listed on
> the Modules [1] page.
>
> Cheers!
>
> /Nathan 'jesterKing' Letwory
>
>   [1] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Modules
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-- 
- Campbell