[Bf-cycles] Cycles contributor meeting notes

[Brecht Van Lommel]

On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 9:52 AM, Nathan Letwory <nathan at mcneel.com> wrote:
>> CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION
>
> Perhaos this could be used also to automatically sync the stand-alone
> repository. Yes, there is the script by Sergey, but that works on linux.
> And still is manual. CI can be used to automate that.

Maybe, but we'd need to automatically check there are no merge
conflicts, build errors or failing tests, and sometimes bump versions.
Committing code to me it seems more like a manual job for a developer
to do carefully, rather than something we can safely automate.

Perhaps if the Cycles standalone repository contained the script, then
any developer could do the update themselves when they need it?

>> XML FILE FORMAT
>>
> For Rhinoceros 3D we use this extensively also. This is also used for
> Grasshopper 3D, and we'll be continuing to do so.
>
> That said, we currently use a C# implementation of the XML API, but we'd
> be really happy if this can be retained.
>
>> File format itself doesn't matter too much, might switch to something
>> else than XML if needed. But as long as the Cycles API can read/write
>> it, it's not a big deal.
>
> I'd like to stick with XML, because currently a switch away from that
> would mean re-implementing the parser.

So you have your own XML parser? I think generally a better system is
to let Cycles read and write the files, then you have only a single
code path to export data for interactive renders and for renders from
an XML file.

>> UDIM / PTEX
>> OPENVDB AND VOLUME RENDERING
>
> Not of very much importance to us at the moment. I guess this will stay
> optional when building Cycles code...

I expect so, external libraries normally have options to turn them off.

> Did the meeting talk about C++1x usage in an effort to drop boost
> dependency? For our usage we have also essentially dropped OpenImageIO,
> since Rhino already has image reading code etc. Only the ustring part is
> really in use, so there is a heavily cut-down version of OIIO (just that
> what is needed minus all image reading code). Ideally we'd want a Cycles
> that has as few dependencies as possible, but I understand that isn't
> necessarily the main focus :)

We didn't talk about it at the meeting, but we definitely want to get
rid of a direct dependency on Boost and use C++11 instead. It's just
waiting for Blender build script updates before we can make the
switch.

Regards,
Brecht.