[Bf-committers] Blender 2.93 Released!

Ryan Inch mythologylover75 at gmail.com
Thu Jun 17 07:51:00 CEST 2021


@Brecht
Yes, add-ons authors are credited in the preferences, but that is highly 
different from the credits page as you have to specifically expand the 
add-on to see the credit and it doesn't show the number of commits that 
author has made.

Bundling does make a difference because it marks the add-ons as 
officially endorsed by Blender, they are available to every blender user 
and these add-ons are universally recognized and frequently mentioned in 
tutorials.  Furthermore, moving add-ons to an online repository would 
negatively affect Blender users, invalidating many tutorials, and 
decreasing the attainability of tools that users have relied upon for 
years.  Add-ons, plugins, mods, these are what make great enduring 
applications and vibrant, thriving, user communities, and it is to 
everyone's benefit to showcase and include them.

As to UI/UX design, add-ons use mostly Blender widgets, so their UIs are 
almost 100% compatible with the rest of blender, and each add-on must be 
reviewed before being included with Blender, and therefore, if their UX 
was incompatible, they wouldn't be accepted.

All Blender devs, regardless of whether they are working on "core" 
Blender or an add-on, are required to provide documentation for the 
features they develop, and are generally expected to continue to develop 
and help maintain the area of their choice.  Since add-on developers put 
in similar work and their add-ons are distributed with Blender and 
provide part of its functionality, it seems natural that they should 
receive the same marketing, and that denying them that will only hurt 
Blender as a whole.  Why wouldn't you want to advertise as many features 
possible?  Advertising add-ons will only make Blender more attractive, 
and treating add-ons as first class citizens will attract high quality 
developers that will not only add functionality through add-ons but will 
likely contribute to "core" Blender development as well.

--Addendum--
This was written before your latest email, but I feel it still has many 
good points.  One of the things consistent in both emails is your desire 
for add-ons to be moved to an online repository, however, there are 
already several online repositories that feature add-ons (one of which 
is the Blender Market) and it seems obvious to me that adding another 
into the mix is far less valuable than bundling them with Blender.

@Dalai
I know that not everything in the wiki shows up in the "fancy" release 
notes, however looking at this version's specific release notes, the 
majority of subjects were at least mentioned except for the add-on 
related topics.

Interestingly enough, add-ons are much better represented in the release 
notes up until 2.92, although never in their own section, which I might 
expect given the unique position they hold. Regardless of where they 
show up in the release notes, this brings us back to one of my initial 
questions as to when is the cutoff for editing the wiki to make it into 
the "fancy" release notes, or at least of having the chance of making it 
into the "fancy" release notes.

Ryan

On 2021-06-12 06:00 AM, bf-committers-request at blender.org wrote:
> Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2021 16:44:40 +0200
> From: Dalai Felinto<dalai at blender.org>
> To: bf-blender developers<bf-committers at blender.org>
> Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Blender 2.93 Released!
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAKD4fWfWNmxCsvCJoJYMQ52n15MWhu1YpnsaNut_n=qf-2HNhA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> As for the "fancy" release notes. Not everything that is in the wiki shows
> up there.
>
> The communication team makes a selection on what is worth showing, what to
> simply mention, and what to leave only to the wiki. The "Blender Features
> in 5 minutes" and the reel editors also reverse the right to pick and
> choose what is highlighted.
>
> -Dalai-
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dalai Felinto -dalai at blender.org  -www.blender.org
> Blender Development Coordinator
> Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands
>
>
> Op vr 11 jun. 2021 om 15:11 schreef Brecht Van Lommel via Bf-committers <
> bf-committers at blender.org>:
>
>> Personally, I wouldn't change this.
>>
>> Add-ons authors are credited in the add-on preferences, where you go to
>> enable the add-on. The fact that they are bundled rather than installed
>> from an online repository (which is what we should do eventually) makes
>> little practical difference I think.
>>
>> For the release notes, I don't think we should be putting much emphasis on
>> add-ons that often have a UI/UX and design different than core Blender,
>> usually created by individuals without review. The freedom to do that
>> creates very useful functionality and leads to fast development, but I
>> wouldn't market that as part of Blender the product in the same way.
>>
>> The way I see it is that as an add-on author you get both the freedom and
>> the responsibility for development, docs, and marketing. If anything we
>> should decouple such things more, rather than integrating them.
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 6:07 AM Ryan Inch via Bf-committers <
>> bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Dalai,
>>> I'm not talking about an add-on in particular, I'm referring to add-ons
>>> in general.
>>>
>>> In regard to your first point, we are agreed that the credit gen script
>>> is skipping add-ons; however, from what you've shown me, it looks like
>>> it would be easy to support.  So I'm wondering why it is that add-ons
>>> are being skipped and what can be done to correct it for the 2.93
>> release?
>>> In regard to your second point, I am aware that it is the responsibility
>>> of the developer to document changes in the wiki release notes, I do so
>>> for every release, and I thank you for your willingness to help with any
>>> problems accessing the wiki.  I was, however, referring to the fancier
>>> release notes [1] that are compiled from the wiki release notes, and
>>> that these have been lacking a section for add-ons recently.  So, what
>>> is required to have an add-ons section added to the 'fancy' release
>> notes?
>>> Ryan
>>>
>>> [1]https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-93/
>>>
>>> On 2021-06-07 06:00 AM,bf-committers-request at blender.org  wrote:
>>>> Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2021 10:05:36 +0200
>>>> From: Dalai Felinto<dalai at blender.org>
>>>> To: bf-blender developers<bf-committers at blender.org>
>>>> Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Blender 2.93 Released!
>>>> Message-ID:
>>>>        <CAKD4fWcP41W8FFQW+5Tc5cAEwY=
>>> zavhavyzc5RWS4JbBG1M_KQ at mail.gmail.com>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>>>>
>>>> Hi Ryan,
>>>> Are you talking about an add-on in particular? There are two related
>> but
>>>> separate topics in your email:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Contributors credit
>>>> The script that generates the credits [1] is indeed be skipping the
>>> add-on
>>>> repositories.
>>>>
>>>> 2. Release notes
>>>> It is the responsibility of any developer that contributes code, to
>>>> document the changes and mention them in the (wiki) release notes [2].
>> If
>>>> an add-on maintainer needs wiki access they can contact me directly via
>>>> email or as dfelinto in blender.chat.
>>>>
>>>> [1] -
>>>>
>> https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/BDT/browse/master/utils/credits_git_gen.py
>>>> [2] -
>> https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.93/Add-ons
>>>> -Dalai-
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Dalai Felinto -dalai at blender.org  -www.blender.org
>>>> Blender Development Coordinator
>>>> Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Op za 5 jun. 2021 om 07:10 schreef Ryan Inch via Bf-committers <
>>>> bf-committers at blender.org>:
>>>>
>>>>> Congratulations on the release!  Everything looks good, there seems to
>>>>> be tons of great improvements,
>>>>> and the reels are quite impressive.
>>>>>
>>>>> However, I have noticed that Add-ons are treated differently in the
>>>>> release notes.  Judging by the emails from the bf-extensions mailing
>>>>> list, many of the Add-ons bundled with Blender receive dozens of
>> updates
>>>>> between each release, but this hasn't lately been advertised in the
>>>>> release notes (aside from the occasional mention in @SouthernShotty's
>> 5
>>>>> minute videos, very grateful to him for that), plus the
>>>>> authors/maintainers and their commits to these Add-ons don't seem to
>> be
>>>>> credited on the credits page[1].  Since the Add-ons are bundled with
>>>>> Blender, is there a reason that they aren't credited at release?
>>>>>
>>>>> If the reason for this is, in part, that authors/maintainers aren't
>>>>> adding their changes to the wiki version of the
>>>>> release notes in time, then I would like to inquire as to when the
>>>>> cutoff for editing the wiki is to make it into the
>>>>> release notes, or what else could be done to have them included?
>>>>>
>>>>> Ryan Inch (Imaginer)
>>>>> Developer of the Collection Manager Add-on.
>>>>>
>>>>> [1]https://www.blender.org/about/credits/
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2021-06-03 06:00 AM,bf-committers-request at blender.org   wrote:
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> Message: 1
>>>>>> Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2021 19:18:32 +0200
>>>>>> From: Dalai Felinto<dalai at blender.org>
>>>>>> To: bf-blender developers<bf-committers at blender.org>
>>>>>> Subject: [Bf-committers] Blender 2.93 Released!
>>>>>> Message-ID:
>>>>>>         <
>>>>> CAKD4fWfyVsXY6FTAZYpgUdjTnnxOw1fTEWsZA4J5kbuwjkNO6g at mail.gmail.com>
>>>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>> Blender 2.93 LTS is officially released.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The release notes are here:
>>>>>> https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-93/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You can check two great videos with everything 2.93 related:
>>>>>> * Reel:https://youtu.be/fxNlpQYRz7s
>>>>>> * Features:https://youtu.be/mnnMFJ3iWH0
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Congratulations everyone!
>>>>>> -Dalai-
>>>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> Dalai Felinto -dalai at blender.org  -www.blender.org
>>>>>> Blender Development Coordinator
>>>>>> Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Bf-committers mailing list
>>>>> Bf-committers at blender.org
>>>>> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>>>>>
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