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

[Sergey Sharybin]

Hi everyone,

I had a discussion with Brecht here. He brought up a good point which I do
agree with him is important: keep render engines working. We do have an
official render engine API, and breaking render engines support without
good reason is not very nice.

Here is an update of my proposal:

> Blender runs on an operating system stated by the VFX Reference Platform,
but the exact library versions are not followed.

The constraints/restrictions are:
- Not to break file compatibility for 3rd party formats such as EXR, VDB,
Alembic: files exported from Blender should be openable in another software
used in the pipeline, and vice-versa
- Not to break external render engines

Think summary of practical implications goes as following:
- We don't update libraries unless there is benefit for Blender users
- All known breakages are announced
- If an unpredicted breakage happens we look into it (same as we look, say,
into conflicts between Mesa and OSL via LLVM)

For the moving forward I think if BF admins agree on the proposal we make
it official and stick to it.

Best regards,
 -Sergey -
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Sergey Sharybin - sergey at blender.org - www.blender.org
Principal Software Engineer, Blender
Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands


On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 4:58 AM Ray Molenkamp via Bf-committers <
bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:

> The reason that is, most of the people involved are in the
> discussion are not in a position to make this decision
> (and that includes me) We can have good arguments on either
> side of following or not following, but none of us can
> decide.
>
> This is something that will have to be decided at the top.
> It's essentially between Ton and the project admins, decide
> what what the position is of the blender project, VFX Platform
> are we in or are we out?
>
> The stance we had for the last few years, "We're in, this
> year, since it kinda aligns, next year? maybe not? there's
> exceptions... if we feel like it.." isn't working, the
> sooner we realize that the better.
>
> If we again do not take a solid stance, I guarantee you
> we will have the same song and dance in between 6 and 12
> months from now.
>
> I'm not overly interested in deciding on the
> python upgrade right now (even though that personally
> puts me in a rough spot with bcon3 this close) I'd
> rather see this through and have HQ sort it out once
> and for all.
>
> --Ray
>
> On 2022-01-19 8:34 p.m., Campbell Barton via Bf-committers wrote:
> > This discussion seems to suffer the same fate as other VFX platform
> > threads...  fizzle out with no conclusion.
> >
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