How do I find whats been added to daily builds? No, we don't have a period in the release cycle specifically for fixes and enhancements.īefore release (2-3 weeks) we only accept bug fixes, however - we are rather strict about the kinds of bug-fixes we accept, so it's not a good time to work on more general improvements. Is the release cycle completely frozen to focus exclusively on solving bugs and enhance existing features? If theres enough demand from users on an older release who can't upgrade, we could always provide releases that only contain critical fixes. While the option to provide different kinds of releases is always open to us,īack-porting many changes from newer releases splits up developer resources. There would need to be enough interest from users and support from developers. Would you consider a long term support release (LTS)? Release Cycle, follow up discussion ( thread view).
Mailing list discussions on this topic (2011, before migration to GIT). Release-cycle proposal & mailing list discussion: This is not to say our release process is perfect, but for now we're satisfied with the current release cycle and aren't likely to change it significantly. To support periodic releases, we strive to keep our main branch ( master) always stable, developing features in branches, which are merged into master when ready. Instead of frantically rushing out releases, we've largely streamlined the process, so it's not a determent to regular development. because other areas were still in development. Users wouldn't have access to features which were ready for release.(assuming it wasn't important enough for a bugfix release). When a bug was fixed, users didn't know how long it would be until that got into a stable release.(otherwise it may not get into a release for another year). With over 6 months between some releases, developers would try to push changes weeks before the release, even when they weren't quite ready.
The long gaps between releases allowed code to be in an unfinished/broken state for periods of time.Since Blender's a very complex application, it became increasingly difficult to pick the perfect moment to release for _all_ areas.Ĭonsider the wide range of areas: rendering, shading languages, modifiers, API's, physics, game engine, file format support, painting, hardware such as tablet/3d-mouse support.With active developers maintaining many areas, some volunteers with other commitments - we couldn't always rely on specific tasks being finished in a fixed timeframe.In the years prior to 2.5x development we used this approach, and found it had a number of problems. Why not release Blender when it's ready instead of rushing them every few months? Planning details change too often and don't fit well with general Q&A.įor more specific development FAQ see: Developer FAQįor details on our release cycle, see: Release Cycle Questions about specific features in development can't be properly handled on this page. 1.5.4 Why not support languages besides Python?.1.5.3 Why are patches/features rejected just because "code isn't good enough"?.1.5.2 Why not use an existing GUI toolkit?.1.5.1 Feature X in Application Y is Perfect! Why can't you add it without "re-inventing the wheel"?.