[Bf-committers] Handling of user data.

[Ryan Inch]

In this case I find myself agreeing with Blender's definition of a bug, so:

"Thanks for the report, but the issue reported here is a request for 
modified/improved behavior and not a bug in current behavior."

But joking aside, what we have currently is a garbage collection system, 
it does not delete data on save, it simply doesn't save the unused 
data.  This system works very well and allows for easy interlinking of 
different data to objects while keeping everything clean, provided you 
are aware of it and know how to use it.  The major problem of why people 
are losing data is because they aren't aware of the system and/or forget 
to mark an unused data-block for saving.  The easiest way to prevent 
data loss would be to warn users on quit of the data that won't be saved 
(as mentioned in Mike Drake (LichenDigital)'s proposal, although his 
proposal goes much further than that).  If a warning on the quit dialog 
is implemented, along with better tools to review unused data, I think 
this will go a long way towards preventing data loss, educating new 
users, and instilling them with good data management practices, i.e. 
they will use the system as it's supposed to be used instead of marking 
everything with fake user out of fear.

Perhaps this is the solution everyone has been talking about all along, 
but it's sounded like the prevailing opinion has been to just fake user 
everything which would completely break the garbage collection system.  
Just because everything else does it one way doesn't mean that is the 
best way and that we should follow suit. We currently have a very useful 
system that is missing safeguards, but just because it's missing the 
safeguards doesn't mean the whole system should be scrapped, it means 
that the safeguards should be implemented.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that users losing data is a very bad thing, 
but please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Ryan Inch (Imaginer)

P.S.  I would like this to be in reply to the whole thread as of today 
and include all the quotes, but gmail isn't letting me, so you'll just 
have to imagine them. ;)