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

[Sergey Sharybin]

Hi Brecht,

Sure there are trade-offs and different ways of solving problems. It is
more of what the Blender project considers important. For example: is it
more important to spend developers' time on patching our own version
(effectively, fork) of Python, or deviate from the Platform by updating to
a vanilla newer version of upstream and focus actual development on
something more impactful.

For the distros: we know Blender is used there and that distros contribute
back to Blender. Or, at least, participate in Blender development. To me,
making this part unnecessarily complicated for the distros, and
prioritizing benefits for an unknown number of studios, doesn't seem to
play in the best of open source community driven nature of Blender.

P.S. If the VFX Platform finds it important to use libraries like Python
for longer than the upstream supports them, why can't the people who
benefit from the VFX Platform maintain the forks?

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


On Mon, Jan 24, 2022 at 1:09 PM Brecht Van Lommel via Bf-committers <
bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:

> There are definite trade-offs, but a few things:
> * Linux distribution packages are not expected to follow the VFX platform.
> They have always deviated in the library versions compared to our own
> builds, including the Python version.
> * Upgrading to the latest Python version is not the only way to fix bugs,
> we can also patch our Python build with a fix for the rare case that
> happens and is important.
> * The platform library versions are not that old, and in some cases it has
> made us upgrade quicker. We've never tracked the latest libraries closely
> for every Blender release.
> * At least for me, tracking to the VFX platform did not stop me making
> upstream contributions or fixing build issues with latest versions of
> libraries.
> * It's not clear to me how the VFX platform could negatively affect studios
> making contributions to Blender, that would be an argument against LTS
> releases if anything.
> * Studios will stick to a particular platform for the duration of a
> project, and in parallel use newer platforms for new projects. That's the
> sane option for them regardless if we like it.
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 24, 2022 at 12:28 PM Sybren A. Stüvel via Bf-committers <
> bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:
>
> >  On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 02:27:19PM +0100, Dalai Felinto via
> Bf-committers
> > wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
> > This seems to ignore the fact that we've already broken with the VFX ref
> > platform when it comes to the Python version. It was done simply because
> a
> > Blender-crashing bug was fixed in Python, and the only way to get that
> fix
> > was to get a newer version of Python.
> >
> > On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 at 16:31, Sebastian Parborg via Bf-committers <
> > bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:
> >
> > > It will lead to very rigid and stale development environment which will
> > > use obsolete library versions and APIs even before we do a new release.
> > > Our developers will not be able to be agile when handling library
> > > related issues or follow upstream development incrementally. This also
> > > means that we can't collaborate with upstream that well either.
> > >
> >
> > This is also what I suspect might happen when we take the stance to stick
> > to the VFX platform.
> >
> >
> > > To me the easiest solution would simply just to take the stance that if
> > > someone wants to use a frozen and outdated target platform, then they
> > > can simply just use an older version of Blender that uses the required
> > > python version and libraries.
> > >
> >
> > Part of the problem is that the VFX platform is all over the place when
> it
> > comes to the age of the libraries. It's not just sticking to old
> versions,
> > but also has suggested a version of OpenEXR that wouldn't even be
> released
> > yet. It's the combination of unusably old and not-yet-usable new that
> > boggles my mind. There is no old version of Blender that matches the old
> > versions of the VFX ref platform, because there is no moment in time when
> > all those versions were considered "current".
> >
> > Sybren
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