[Bf-committers] Handling of user data.

[Ryan Inch]

Hi Ray,
I agree that this is a serious issue and would like to see this 
resolved.  The good news is that it's actively being discussed[1][2][3] 
and there is, what seems to me, a good proposal[4] by Mike Drake 
(LichenDigital) that has had no major objections and seems to show an 
understanding of both sides of this, complex, contentious, issue.  If 
this proposal does not have one already, I propose that it be given an 
official branch to allow development and testing, at least to some basic 
degree of functionality (some parts of the proposal would require 
significant development time and so are impractical to include), so that 
it can be practically determined if it would meet the needs of peoples' 
diverse workflows.  From what I've seen Mike Drake (LichenDigital) seems 
to be working hard with the community on this issue, and I think would 
be open to implementing his proposal as a branch, if asked.

Ryan Inch (Imaginer)


[1] 
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/blender-deleted-my-un-assigned-materials-how-is-that-a-feature-fake-user/22715

[2] 
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/proposal-explicit-management-of-data-blocks-and-possible-deprecation-of-fake-user/22852

[3] https://developer.blender.org/T61209

[4] https://developer.blender.org/T61209#1304227

On 2022-05-10 06:00 AM, bf-committers-request at blender.org wrote:
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 9 May 2022 13:12:09 -0600
> From: Ray Molenkamp<ray at lazydodo.com>
> To: bf-blender developers<bf-committers at blender.org>
> Subject: [Bf-committers] Handling of user data.
> Message-ID:<016967e8-df31-886c-1e33-4dfef0c3eae3 at lazydodo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> All,
>
> It's been years [1] (2018) since I last was rather
> vocal on this subject, but how is this [2] still
> happening? "Yes, blender deleted your data (and silently
> at that), that means it's working correctly!" cannot
> possibly be the best we can do, is it?
>
> While I'm excited with all the directions blender
> development is currently going, it's utterly depressing that
> users are still losing data on a daily basis because
> we can't quite get the basics right like "do not delete the
> users data without their consent".
>
> These are*NOT*  isolated incidents [3]. Losing your
> data and learning about "the fake user" shouldn't be
> a right of passage to become "a real blender user".
> Users shouldn't be silently*losing*  data in an operation
> ironically called*saving*. That's crazy, no other
> application behaves like this!
>
> Yes, I know this is how we have always done it. No,
> this is not OK, never was.
>   
> Ton: Please make protecting the user’s data a
> priority, as it doesn’t seem this will happen otherwise.
>
> --Ray
>
>
> [1]https://devtalk.blender.org/t/oh-no/505/2
> [2]https://developer.blender.org/T97968
> [3]https://devtalk.blender.org/t/more/22715