[Bf-committers] Policies about patches modifying third-parties libraries.

[Sybren A. Stüvel]

Hi,

I agree with Bastien, and have sent an email to the USD Interest group,
with a CC on
https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-usd/2020-August/000014.html.

Kind regards,

Sybren


On 25-08-2020 21:05, Bastien Montagne via Bf-committers wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Under build_files/build_environment/patches we have a bunch of small
> patches for the libraries we build using make deps. Most of them are
> about fixing builds for some platform or architecture, which is a bit
> annoying but acceptable imho.
>
> However, today I discovered that Blender cannot be built with vanilla
> USD library, at all. The patch used on this library adds some new
> function to its API, which (hack over hack) is not even declared in
> its headers, but in Blender code itself.
>
> I would very much like to propose to strictly forbid such dirty
> practices, which violate completely the very idea of libraries,
> especially on OSs like linux, where distributions try very hard to
> only use dynamically linked shared libraries.
>
> Any library that would need that kind of modifications should be put
> in extern/, and explicitly built as part of Blender itself. Or at the
> very least, we should explicitly maintain our own 'fork' of it, with
> requests to the main repo/maintainers to integrate our changes or
> otherwise propose a solution to the problem.
>
> But I do hope there are ways to avoid such ugly changes anyway?
>
> Cheers,
> Bastien
>
>
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-- 
dr. Sybren A. Stüvel

Blender Software Developer

https://blender.org/
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