BLENDER 2.79

[Adam Weinberger]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 10:45 PM Shane Ambler <FreeBSD at shaneware.biz> wrote:
>
> On 19/4/20 6:15 am, Adam Weinberger wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 2:31 PM Tomasz CEDRO <tomek at cedro.info> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello world :-)
> >>
> >> I have been using Blender-2.79 from Shane's Red Ports repository on
> >> GitHub because Blender since version 2.80 (current port is 2.82)
> >> unfortunately removed the Blender Game Engine (BGE) which I am using
> >> for work.
> >>
> >> The only solution so far is to use older Blender2.79 that still has
> >> the BGE. Blender developers just removed something with no alternative
> >> and no plan for alternative. Luckily I found Shane's repository that
> >> provides port for older version.
> >>
> >> Another solution is to have UPBGE Blender 2.80 fork with experimental
> >> and refreshed BGE included, unfortunately the BGE API has changed and
> >> it is not backward-compatible.
> >>
> >> My question is can we include both Blender-2.79 and UPBGE in the
> >> official ports tree next to official Blender release? All dependencies
> >> are provided,
>
> Actually you also need the older openimageio18 port.
>
> Also note that 2.79 uses python 3.5 which is EOL 9/2020 - ~5 months
> https://devguide.python.org/#status-of-python-branches
>
> >> all of them works fine next to each other. It would be
> >> really handy to have at least Blender-2.79 from PKG.
> >>
> >> https://github.com/sambler/sambler-redports/tree/master/graphics/blender279
> >> https://github.com/sambler/sambler-redports/tree/master/graphics/upbge
> >
> > BGE is gone and done, and in most cases FreeBSD does not keep old
> > versions of ports around, and that's especially true for massive and
> > complex projects like Blender.
>
> The need to support an older blender version only relies on the use of
> the game engine, having started a project using the 2.79 BGE it is not
> nice to have to start from scratch. This would be the reason to support
> 2.79 in ports. Unfortunately only one person has shown interest in the
> nine months since 2.80 was released.

No, I certainly get it. As awesome as Eevee is, it's a completely
different paradigm from the internal renderer, and BGE has no analogue
at all in 2.8x. There's really only three solutions here: (1) We have
a way for Tomasz to install 2.79, (2) Tomasz starts over using a
different toolkit, or (3) Tomasz moves to a platform where running
2.79 is trivial. Clearly, (1) is the best possible option.

Shane, if you are able to provide and support a 2.79 port, I'd be
thrilled to see it in the tree.

> If you are planning to release your project, you also need to consider
> support for 2.79 on other systems as well.
>
> > When UPBGE matures it'd be great to have it in the tree, but bringing
>
> I have submitted a port for upbge, following the blender 2.8x branch,
> while it is considered pre-release, it is only the game engine that is
> under development, the remainder should match the relevant blender
> release. The master branch is still based on 2.79 and would need the
> older openimageio as well.
> https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=244535
>
> > back unsupported and unmaintained older versions of software isn't a
> > path we go down very often. If Blender were a trivial build, it'd be
> > more feasible, but the complexity of the maintenance burden is
> > difficult to overcome.
>
> I personally maintain several blender versions, mostly to allow testing.
> Usually there is little effort, I stop updating older versions as
> dependent ports get dropped and patching gets too much, now at 2.77+.
> I make these publicly available on github not as official ports.
>
> The main concern with having a second blender port for 2.79 is the
> python35 EOL in five months.

Is py35 a hard dep for 2.79 or can that be adjusted to 3.5+?

# Adam


-- 
Adam Weinberger
adamw at adamw.org
https://www.adamw.org