[Bf-committers] Proposal for clarified VFX Reference Platform Support

[Dalai Felinto]

Hi,

The full statement about the VFX Reference Platform is here:
https://code.blender.org/2022/02/vfx-reference-platform/

Have a good weekend everyone,
-Dalai-
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dalai Felinto - dalai at blender.org - www.blender.org
Blender Development Coordinator
Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands


Op wo 26 jan. 2022 om 17:01 schreef Dalai Felinto <dalai at blender.org>:

> Hi,
>
> > To move this forward I'm setting up a call with the other bf-admins next
> week. We will report back afterwards.
>
> We agreed on upgrading Python to 3.10 in time for Blender 3.1 beta.
>
> A more detailed email will be posted soon. Meanwhile I wanted to share
> this heads up to prevent any confusion, since the platform team is already
> updating the Python library.
>
> Thanks everyone for the feedback,
> -Dalai-
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dalai Felinto - dalai at blender.org - www.blender.org
> Blender Development Coordinator
> Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands
>
>
> Op za 22 jan. 2022 om 05:35 schreef Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com
> >:
>
>> On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 12:28 AM Dalai Felinto via Bf-committers
>> <bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi,
>> > I believe Blender should stick to the VFX platform.
>> >
>> > After all that has been said, I think it may boil down to making a
>> decision
>> > between immediate known benefits and strategic uncertain long-term
>> benefits.
>> >
>> > * On one hand we have tangible benefits for some users that we know of
>> > (e.g., Python scripters will benefit from Python 3.10).
>> > * On the other hand sticking to the VFX platform can pay off in the long
>> > run with making Blender more likely to be integrated in large pipelines.
>>
>> It *could* but from my perspective with Python - I didn't see any
>> evidence this was the case for Blender 2.8x / 2.9x which followed the
>> VFX platform Python version (for 2.8x, 2.9x ... until we ran into
>> problems, see [0]).
>>
>> A reminder that using the VFX platform's Python version means (at least
>> some of the time) Blender's Python version won't be getting bug-fixes
>> as each release only gets fixes for 18 months [2].
>> To be fair, running into bugs in Python is fairly rare, so I don't
>> consider this a huge down side. Nevertheless missing out on fixes +
>> new features is still a down side.
>>
>> At some point strategic decisions like this should have tangible
>> benefits beyond the *possability* of attracting a user base. Maybe it
>> will be different this time - in that case there should be an
>> explanation as to why.
>>
>> > One of the long-term goals for the Blender project, is to welcome more
>> > contributions by the industry. And I think investing on that vision
>> trumps
>> > the immediate benefit the latest Python (or other library) brings to
>> > Blender.
>>
>> It seems likely to me the benefits of Python sticking to the VFX
>> platform are being perceived as greater than they actually are (beyond
>> messaging that "we support the VFX platform").
>>
>> While there are scenarios with Python ABI compatibility (relating to
>> the VFX platform) can cause problems, and I'm not saying nobody ever
>> ran into these issues - this seems more like a corner case which isn't
>> actually blocking people in the VFX industry using Blender in
>> practice. If it was, they were not vocal when it was announced we
>> planned to upgrade to Python 3.9.
>>
>> Part of my skepticism gets into the details of what the VFX platform
>> is generally used for, from what I can gather the QT graphical toolkit
>> and it's Python bindings are a significant factor deciding if Python
>> can be upgraded for the VFX platform. (PySide [1] sometimes lags in
>> it's Python support).
>>
>> Since using QT from Blender is impractical (last I checked at least),
>> it's not clear if sticking to an older Python has all that much
>> benefit for VFX users either (as native Python modules typically
>> aren't a problem).
>>
>> > To have studios contributing to Blender is a two-way street. And Blender
>> > sticking to the VFX is the least the Blender project can do on its end.
>>
>> As far as I can see we tried this and it didn't yield much, if you
>> propose to try it again - it's reasonable to question what success
>> would look like - and what would be a reasonable time frame to decide.
>>
>> > I look forward to see this and other efforts in that direction, such as
>> > onboarding, code documentation, infrastructure and development
>> practices.
>>
>> Supporting the VFX platform and other topics such as onboarding,
>> development practices ... etc seem unrelated.
>>
>> > To move this forward I'm setting up a call with the other bf-admins next
>> > week. We will report back afterwards.
>> >
>> > Thanks everything for the contributions,
>> > -Dalai-
>>
>> [0]: https://bugs.python.org/issue35523
>> [1]: https://pypi.org/project/PySide
>> [2]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0602/
>>
>