Note: This is an archived version of the Blender Developer Wiki (archived 2024). The current developer documentation is available on developer.blender.org/docs.

User:ThomasDinges/WeeklyReports/2023

2023

Calendar Week 1

Jan 2 - Jan 8

Mostly time off.

General

  • Posting the weekly notes.
  • Bcon2 for Blender 3.5 is delayed due to pending patches, will be checked on Monday 9th.

Calendar Week 2

Jan 9 - Jan 15

This week I visited the Blender HQ in Amsterdam and had a lot of talks and catching up with everyone. Thanks for having me.

It was also good to evaluate the past year and confirm the goals and responsibilities of my role: Onboarding, release management, module coordination and GSoC. To better summarize this, my formal role is Development Coordinator from now on.

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Posted the weekly notes.

Release Management

  • Moved to Bcon2 on Tuesday, it was delayed a bit to give more time to Hans and Martijn to merge their patches.
  • Posted an updated policy on handling high priority reports.
  • Checked on all existing high priority reports and asked developers for updates on them.

Development

  • D16976: Cycles: Add AVX512 kernel. (WIP)

Calendar Week 3

Jan 16 - Jan 22

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.

Release Management

  • LTS Updates (3.3.3 and 2.93.14) on Tuesday, tested builds, tagged git, updated website...
  • Fixed LTS script generating bad URLs (rBc1d360f7)

Module Coordination

Development

  • Cleanup: Remove unused light_sample_is_light() function. rBf31f7e3e

Triaging

  • Closed more than 40 reports that were pending in status "Needs Information from User", most of them since December.

Calendar Week 4

Jan 23 - Jan 29

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.

Module Coordination

To be more visible and approachable, I will regularly join module meetings from now on. Also helps to better stay in the loop of ongoing projects and development.

GSoC

  • Checked on and updated our wiki docs and ideas page, will submit the organization submission next week.

Gitea migration

  • Send mail to bf-commiters about the migration and also the 3.5 release delay.
  • Tested the new site and discussed issues and workflows with others.

Calendar Week 5

Jan 30 - Feb 5

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.

GSoC

  • Submitted the organization application to Google for GSoC 2023.

Gitea

  • Tested the new Gitea platform, reported issues, worked on docs...

Calendar Week 6

Feb 6 - Feb 12

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.

Gitea

  • Spent most week on Gitea, testing, adding back devs to the teams, help on the chat, docs...

Calendar Week 7

Feb 13 - Feb 19

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.

Meetings

  • Admin meeting on Tuesday

Gitea

  • Spent some time again on account support, answering questions about workflows etc.

Release Management

Calendar Week 8

Feb 20 - Feb 26

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Thursday.

Meetings

  • Cycles module meeting on Tuesday

Release Management

  • Little bit of work on the 2.93.15 and 3.3.4 LTS updates on Tuesday, version bump and updating milestones.
  • Updated text on the release cycle wiki page and the 4.0 milestone.

Google Summer of Code

  • Blender has been accepted again to participate in this years GSoC. Sent announcement mail to bf-commiters, updated the wiki page and posted a thread with infos on devtalk.

Calendar Week 9

Feb 27 - Mar 5

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Tuesday.
  • Onboarding call with Harley.

Module Coordination

Triaging

  • Did some bug triaging.

Calendar Week 10

Mar 6 - Mar 12

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Module Coordination

  • Joined the Animation & Rigging module meeting on Thursday.

Release Management

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Wednesday. Many people joined this week, especially interested in contributing to GSoC.

Triaging

  • Did some bug triaging again.

Calendar Week 11

Mar 13 - Mar 19

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meetings

  • Admin meeting on Tuesday

Release Management

  • Went over all high priority reports and asked for updates.
  • Set up Linux environment again to work on the THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES update for 3.5.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Thursday.

Module Coordination

Calendar Week 12

Mar 20 - Mar 26

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

GSoC

  • Contributors Sign-up is open since Monday. Answered questions on the chat, invited more mentors to help with reviewing proposals etc.

Release management

  • Helped a bit with the LTS updates on Tuesday (version char bump, tagging git)
  • Updated the THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt for 3.5. dd0d572935
  • Updated the freedesktop file for 3.5. 6cf19b2f79
  • Blender 3.5 moved to Bcon4 on wednesday, updated websites and sent out a mail to the ML.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Friday.

Module Coordination

Calendar Week 13

Mar 27 - April 2

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

GSoC

  • Answered questions again on the chat, invited more mentors to help with reviewing proposals etc.

Release management

  • Blender 3.5 release on wednesday. Moved release cycle to bcon5, tested builds, uploded builds to the stores, updated website/chat, release credits etc.

Calendar Week 14

April 3 - April 9

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

GSoC

  • Started reviewing proposals with mentors. Updated website etc with new deadline.

Release management

  • Checked on incoming reports and issues, 3.5.1 is not urgent and can be released after Easter.

Meetings

  • Joined the Render & Cycles module meeting on Tuesday.
  • Meeting with Arnd, Danny and Aaron to discuss git-lfs and moving the manual to git.

Calendar Week 15

April 10 - April 16

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meetings

  • Admin meeting on Tuesday.

Devtalk

  • Worked further on the devtalk reorganization proposal, has been accepted by admins and module owners and will be implemented now.

Shorter week due to Easter.

Calendar Week 16

April 17 - April 23

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Google Summer of code

  • Further coordination to make sure all proposals are reviewied in time for the deadline next week.

Release Management

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Tuesday.

Meetings

  • Joined the Grease Pencil module meeting on Monday.
  • Joined the Render & Cycles module meeting on Tuesday.

Calendar Week 17

April 24 - April 30

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Release Management

  • Released Blender 3.5.1 on Tuesday with more then 59 bugfixes compared to 3.5.0. Updated websites, helped with store deployment, git tagging...

Devtalk re-categorization

  • Implemented the new Devtalk 2.0 proposal, with new categories. See the thread on devtalk for more information.

Google Summer of code

  • Finalized the submission of accepted projects. Google will announce them on May 3rd (publicly on May 4th).

Calendar Week 18

May 1 - May 7

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.
  • Helped with the Annual Report 2022 (developer descriptions and collecting images)

Meetings

  • Joined the Nodes & Physics meeting on Tuesday.
  • Joined the Render & Cycles meeting on Tuesday.

Google Summer of Code

  • Accepted projects have been announced on May 4, published a blog post about them.

Development

Calendar Week 19

May 8 - May 14

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Friday.

Meetings

  • Joined the Admin meeting on Tuesday

Google Summer of Code

  • Onboarded the contributors, sent them a mail with infos about the chat, devtalk and where to post their thread for weekly reports etc.

Calendar Week 20

May 15 - May 21

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meetings

  • Joined the Render & Cycles meeting on Tuesday

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Friday.

Release Management

  • Created the blender-v3.6-release branch for Bcon3, commited version bumps and splash. Updated websites, release notes, sent out announcements etc

Calendar Week 21

May 22 - May 28

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Thursday.

Release Management

  • Helped a bit with LTS releases on Tuesday (3.3 and 2.93). This will be likely the last 2.93 update.

Google Summer of Code

  • Onboarding meeting with students and mentors on Wednesday. It was a good opoortunity to get to know each other and answer open questions. The coding period starts the coming week.

Calendar Week 22

May 29 - June 4

Time off.

Calendar Week 23

June 5 - June 11

Time off.

Calendar Week 24

June 12 - June 18

General

  • Catching up on mails and messages.

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Release Management

  • Checking on high priority bug reports, prepared updates to the THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt file.

Meetings

  • Joined the Render & Cycles meeting on Tuesday.

Calendar Week 25

June 19 - June 25

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Release Management

  • Helped with the 3.3.8 LTS release (testing on stores mainly).
  • Blender 3.6 entered BCon4.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Thursday.

Calendar Week 26

June 26 - July 2

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meetings

Release Management

  • Blender 3.6 LTS was released on Tuesday
  • Final git commits
    • fad70313d9 Release: Bump to 3.6.0 - release.
    • 08ffb77279 Release: Updates for freedesktop file.
    • 91ca4f581b Release: Update license file for OpenSSL 3.0.9.
  • Updated websites (credits, release notes on the wiki, chat, projects landing page...)
  • Git tagging, testing and deployment to the stores (Microsoft, Steam, Snap)

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Friday.

Calendar Week 27

July 3 - July 9

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Google Summer of Code

  • The midterm evaluation is coming up, talked with mentors and checked on contributors status.

Meetings

Development

  • Read about the Gitea API, I want to improve the current High Priority reporting script.

Calendar Week 28

July 10 - July 16

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Thursday.

Meetings

Google Summer of Code

  • Made sure all midterm evaluations were submitted.

Gitea

  • Started to move inactive contributor accounts to "All-Time" teams, for example All-Time-Developers

Calendar Week 29

July 17 - July 23

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Release Management

  • Helped with the LTS updates (3.3.9 and 3.6.1) on tuesday.

Gitea

Calendar Week 30

July 24 - July 30

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Thursday.

Documentation

  • Made the wiki page on using the stabilizing branch clearer, especially what to do after the initial main release.
  • Removed remaining references to the sunsetted mailing lists on the wiki and the module pages on projects.blender.org

Release Planing

  • Checked with all modules if there is a need to delay Blender 4.0 by about a month (release end of December then). Will be further discussed with admins.

Calendar Week 31

July 31 - Aug 6

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meeting

  • Joined the admin meeting on Tuesday. We agreed to stick with the original planning for 4.0 and rather delay some targets to 4.1.

Calendar Week 32

Aug 7 - Aug 13

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Tuesday.

Triaging

  • Closed various old bug reports or asked for updates.

Meetings

  • Various internal meetings.

Calendar Week 33

Aug 14 - Aug 20

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meetings

Release management

  • The LTS releases (3.3.10 and 3.6.2) were postponed from Tuesday to Thursday due to a missing Embree library update. Helped with release tests etc.

Calendar Week 34

Aug 21 - Aug 27

Time off.

Calendar Week 35

Aug 28 - Sep 3

Time off.

Calendar Week 36

Sep 4 - Sep 10

General

  • Catching up with e-mails, messages and development that happened in the last two weeks.

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meetings

Modules

  • Checked on high priority bug reports and reminded / asked people to fix them.

Calendar Week 37

Sep 11 - Sep 17

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meetings

  • Joined the admin meeting on Tuesday.

Modules

  • Checked on high priority bug reports and reminded / asked people to fix them.

Calendar Week 38

Sep 18 - Sep 24

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Onboarding

  • Offered the Open Chat again, this week on Wednesday.

Documentation

  • Updated the add-on page, was still mentioning submodules and old git urls.

Release Management

  • Helped with the LTS Updates (3.6.3 and 3.3.11) on Thursday.
    • 3.6.4 is already scheduled for next week Tuesday, due to two regressions.

Meetings

  • Joined the Grease Pencil meeting on Monday
  • Joined the Render & Cycles meeting on Tuesday

Calendar Week 39

Sep 25 - Oct 1

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meetings

Release Management

  • Hotfix release for 3.6.4 on Tuesday, helped with platform testing.
  • Blender 4.0 went to Bcon3 on Wednesday.
    • Updated the websites, gitea, chat, wiki and posted an announcement to devtalk.
    • Created a new gitea milestone for 4.2, and release notes for 4.1
    • Created the 4.0 release branch, commited version bumps etc

Calendar Week 40

Oct 2 - Oct 8

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Triaging

  • Checked on my Gitea notifications, updated reports, closed old ones etc.

Meetings

  • Joined the Grease Pencil meeting on Thursday.
  • Joined the Animation & Rigging meeting on Thursday.

Calendar Week 41

Oct 9 - Oct 15

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Meetings

Release management

  • Commited new 4.0 splash screen.

Calendar Week 42

Oct 16 - Oct 22

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Release Management

  • Helped with the LTS updates on Thursday.

Calendar Week 43

Oct 23 - Oct 29

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Blender Conference

  • Coordinated the Lightning Talks for the conference.
  • Travel to Amsterdam and conference!

Calendar Week 44

Oct 30 - Nov 5

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Blender Conference

  • Spent Monday and Tuesday in the office in Amsterdam to catch up with everyone.
  • Travel back to Germany.

Release Management

Calendar Week 45

Nov 6 - Nov 12

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Documentation

  • Updated minimum system requirements for Blender to Intel Browadwell GPUs and CPUs with SSE4.2.
  • Investigated how rna_manual_reference.py works and checked on the updater script (rna_manual_reference_updater.py). Talked with Aaron about keeping this updated more frequently.

Release Management

  • Checked on high priority reports and informed developers about them / asked for updates.
  • Updated the licenses document and freedesktop file:
    • 176df4bead Release: Update licenses doc and freedesktop file for 4.0
    • 574b0aa4dc Blender 4.0 database dump.

Calendar Week 46

Nov 13 - Nov 19

Release week, spent most time on getting 4.0 into the wild!

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Documentation

  • Discussed ideas to improve the requirements page. Created a google doc with minimum and recommended values for all platforms. Idea is to have three tabs (one per OS), and make the page much clearer and easier to scan.

Release Management

  • 4.0 release on Tuesday. Checked on builds, uploaded to stores, updated credits page, wiki, gitea, chat...
  • 4.0.1 hotfix release on Friday. I deployed to stores, created release notes, git tagging etc...

Triaging

  • Kept a close eye on the bugtracker this week. Especially crash issues and issues releated to the new bumped hardware requirements.

Calendar Week 47

Nov 20 - Nov 26

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Release Management

  • Helped a bit with LTS updates on Tuesday, but they were then postponed by one week due to the cyberattack.

Calendar Week 48

Nov 27 - Dec 3

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Release Management

Calendar Week 49

Dec 4 - Dec 10

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Release Management

  • Released 4.0.2 on Tuesday, deployed to stores, wrote release notes, tagged git ...

Campaign

  • Helped with testing and PR of the 30th anniversary campaign

Calendar Week 50

Dec 11 - Dec 17

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Release Management

  • Helped a bit with the 3.3 and 3.6 LTS updates on Tuesday.

Documentation

  • Checking on the upcoming new developer documentation platform, investigated new structure for onboarding docs there.

Calendar Week 51

Dec 18 - Dec 24

Mostly time off.

Development Coordination

  • Helped people, answered questions and moderated on our platforms (devtalk, developer, chat...)
  • Hosted the online kick-off meetings on Monday.
  • Finished and posted the weekly dev notes.

Documentation

  • Helped with migration to the new developer documentation platform.

Calendar Week 52

Dec 25 - Dec 31

Communication

Otherwise time off.