A 2.57a update is being prepared to iron out some nasty bugs.
Ton Roosendaal writes:
Blender 2.57 release
- At least two show-stoppers sneaked in the release. One that messed up partial sculpting display and a crash on entering 3d text editing.
- Meeting agrees on doing a 2.57a update release. Both Campbell and Ton will do extensive tracker hunting this monday already. But better be safe than sorry: call for final release can wait until wednesday or thursday. Status will be checked extensively in IRC and on this list.
- This also means we like everyone to check the tracker carefully, and only commit totally safe fixes!
- Doing even better RC testing was also discussed. The regression files on blender.org would have revealed the issues in release... ideas or suggestions to organize this better are welcome! Ton's preference would be to find 5-6 artists available for an extensive test and approve releases before we publish them. It's a boring but rewarding job :) Contact Ton in IRC or here for it?
- Ton contacted the splash committee (Thomas Dinges, Sergey Sharybin, Lukas Toenne) if they could spend review time whether to pick another splash for the update. This we didn't do before, nor do we want to dispute their authority! Thomas confirmed they'll look into it.
- FMX show will be in about 2 weeks! Ton, Thomas and several artists will be demoing on a booth there for 4 days.
Other projects & todos
- Discussion on default keymap convention ongoing on the list. Needs a good proposal to solve in 2.58, which could probably be to have a small standard set of maps to match keyboard layouts, laptops or other 3d programs. Needs further investigation & code work (also for add-ons).
- Intel graphics card problems: Sergey mentions that older Intel drivers (2006!) don't support 'shared OpenGL context' and will crash current svn. Meeting agrees it's acceptable for users to be required to update to stable/current drivers from vendors.
- Tom Musgrove made a wiki page for branch developers to summarize status. Please fill in!
Google Summer of Code
- Mentors and students still have a few days left to review or to update comments.
- Official deadline for reviews and assigning mentors: April 22nd 07:00 UTC.
- Official announcement of accepted students: April 25 19:00 UTC.
Thanks!
-Ton-
26 Comments
Sounds great! THX for the effort!
Just wondering if Blender has any automated regression testing tools? I recently read an article on Gamasutra about Dead Rising 2 and how they created an automatic player that went around the level doing stuff to check for problems in Geometry (falling through floors, getting stuck in walls etc etc)
I know automatic regression is nothing new but I was wondering if Blender has something like it?
Something like a script that can record a user modeling something basic but using all the available tools. Obvoiusly this would not catch all possible bugs, but the basic things like entering text mesh editing etc etc..?
DrD
Personally, I couldn't care less if there's a few bugs. After creating the masterpiece that is Blender, such little things are easily excused. Starting up Blender to create a new illustration has been the best part of my working day for several years now.
Many thanks folks. Good luck to the artists who help out. Now I have two things to look forward to, the other being Portal 2.
Thank you developers!
A new splash screen for Blender!? That'd be a great step forward for Blender, awesome! Meh, keep the focus on the real deal, guys ;)
We all knew this was gona happen. Going out of beta was a huge step forward. We're just lucky that the nature of the software enables 2.57a to be so readily released ^_^
Poor splash screen.. :)
There has been a lot of complains made by the community about the chamaleon splash, I agree that while it's not bad, Blender's splash, should be great and show the software's potential. So I think a good solution could be a site to submit artwork and let the community vote, then just pick the like 10 finalists and let Ton and some other Blender's gurus choose the winner, It'd be the most democratic solution, while maintaining the quality.
"New bugfix release 2.57a to fix showstopper splash screen." ;-)
@Juan Romero
That's what's done, on Blender Artists
Thank you developers:)
I don't think it's "acceptable" to require users to use higher-end hardware in order to utilize Blender. Many of us don't have the money to spend on fancy tech, and it can only turn people off of open source software if it presents an image of only being for up-to-date "tech snobs." Certainly they can have features that require high-end hardware; just make Blender available to anyone with a computer. (Isn't that the point?)
@hjmediastudios: Are you talking about the "Intel graphics card problems"? That is just about downloading of the latest drivers, no hardware stuff
Ok! This days I was going to make a personal project, like a gametype character. So I'm at your disposal for testing the RCs. Just contact me ;)
> I don’t think it’s “acceptable” to require users to use higher-end hardware in order to utilize Blender...just make Blender available to anyone with a computer. (Isn’t that the point?)
Agreed 100%.
I have no problems it yet ,my edit text work fine due to a little change I made in it.
Ton, might referring to the Linux builds.however I'm looking forward to code "Environment
Domain" were no cage is needed to stimulus smoke and fluid! It will be a bitch to coded.
Oh, was the the contest in Blender Artists voted by the users? didn't know that. I thought users just showed their splash screens candidates and then a jury picked one winner.
@Arkady
Hubberthus has already said that graphics drivers are not hardware but a (free, I think) download to help the hardware you already have to work. (you might have seen this if you had read one more comment down)
Just a tiny thought and not for nothing, but... coming from a software development field with a very heavy emphasis on quality... Blender has this fantastic newly refurbished Python API right? Why not script a suite of regression tests and make it a requirement that code passes before it's checked in?
Anyone can download a .py file, run it and see the results in a far shorter time that having 6 human pairs of eyes manually checking each release ... and with a far greater accuracy.
I know features get unit tested when they're developed, but a script that can ascertain the new functionality has not broken anything from the current release is worth more than it's weight in gold, it's worth it's weight in Time - and you can't measure that!
@Juan Romero: if i remember correctly the splash screen is chosen by previous splash screen contest winners and a bunch of other people. I like your splash screen nomination idea.
Is it possible to somehow integrate layer manager. Dots are fine but a bit more control would be a lot of help. Other than that, great work guys, keep it up
off topic...
wow, some of you need to do better research before typing......
on topic...
thanks for the article.
haha i know this is already over (probably) but i would be interested in testing those builds
I'm happy they're going to discuss the splash screen. And I hope they DO change it.
It's not good for users of such a great piece of software to be greeted by such a shoddy image. It's not good publicity.
Thanks to the Devs and Tons for their hard work. I do hope that soon I'll be using only the 2.5x or 2.6 series for work.
Theres a features that would realy be of great help for me. I'm going to work more and more with the BGE and I'm on Windows. Its really kool that I can export standalone now for 2.5x series. But surely I'll have to make those exports work on Mac.
Do you Devs think that a script could be made in order to export from Windows, games from the BGE for Mac and vice versa?
Thx