While I do not mind the practical nuts and bolts of this proposal at all, I do mind the language, referring to the VFX Platform as something worth looking at regarding file or platform compatibility is unfortunate.
The Platform as is makes no attempt to manage file compatibility throughout the pipeline, the big-ticket items in this space such as USD and/or MaterialX aren't even in the platform, the things that are in the platform, such as OpenVDB that have _severe_ file compat issues if build incorrectly do not even have a footnote about it. The only logical conclusion here is, the VFX Platform is a not authority to appeal to regarding file compatibility, so best not to. As for platform compatibility, the messaging in the VFX Platform is confusing, for linux it declares a glibc version, for macOS it declares a deployment target, so far so good, but then for windows it does none of these things, and just recommends a compiler and SDK of which neither determine the OS versions the resulting code can run on, the inclusion of python 3.9 indirectly implies windows 8.1 is their minimum windows deployment target, but honestly I'm unsure if even they are aware of this implication. I'd like to see the proposal move more into concrete direction: > Blender does NOT follow the VFX platform. > > - Blender aims be compatible with operating systems VFX Platform compatible > software will be able run on. > - blender aims not to break file compatibility for 3rd party formats such as > EXR, VDB, Alembic: files exported from Blender should be usable in other > software used in the pipeline, and vice-versa. The last item > - Not to break external render engines Is just not something I think we can we can practically commit to, these are generally linked directly to the python shared libs, and bumping python versions will definitely break most if not all of them. To put an end to having to have this conversation every year, I'd like to break the loop with the following text: > Major blender releases will ship with the latest major python version > available during BCON1 in its development. My proposal - Clarifies our stance on the VFX Platform - Doesn't appeal to an authority the VFX Platform clearly lacks regarding file compat. - Somewhat commits to running on the same platforms as the VFX platform (as much as it can be deduced from the platform, they are vague about it, hard to make any solid commitments here). - Makes the python version blender will ship with predictable. Note that personally, I may or may not approve of the direction being taken here, but judging from your internal discussions this seems to be the way we want to go as a project, in which case clear language is undoubtedly better than vague commitments that sound nice but may set unrealistic expectations. --Ray _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list Bf-committers@blender.org List details, subscription details or unsubscribe: https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers