4 ms·

There really needs to be a "the architecture of open source applications" type writeup about Blender. However it is that it is architectured internally seems t

There really needs to be a "the architecture of open source applications" type writeup about Blender. However it is that it is architectured internally seems to have helped it grow over time and not collapse under the weight of 30 years of hacks and poor decisions.

alhirzel 4y ago
Completely agree, I wonder if it could be proposed and crowd-funded, or perhaps supported by a grant? Link to AOSA for others' convenience: http://aosabook.org/en/index.html http://aosabook.org/en/index.html
akersten 4y ago
The lack of corporate pressures to just get features out the door and clean them up later (never) I assume is a huge factor. I agree, Blender releases new capabilities at such a rapid clip that there's certainly a solid base on which they're building that we could all learn a few lessons from.
UncleEntity 4y ago
> However it is that it is architectured internally… Countless hacks hanging off one giant MVC. And having a few core devs with veto powers has helped a bunch with it never getting bogged down with bad decisions. I tried to get some iffy stuff tacked on but they (mostly Campbell) would be “umm, what’s this good for?” And don’t even think about adding a null check to prevent a segfault without getting permission first, like, signed in blood…in triplicate.
yobert 4y ago
One of their very early decisions was extremely good in my opinion. Each blender file is saved with a complete schema at the start which basically describes a bunch of C structs, and has a marker for byte order. This means that .blend files can be backwards and forwards compatible, and in the most common case of the schema matching your memory layout, can have their data structures copied directly into memory and then only pointer patching is required. It's quite remarkable.
- aliswe 4y ago
  Yeah, agree. Very very handy if you are writing a parser!
cokeandpepsi 4y ago
the blender development wiki is already really good plus I think there's already a book on working in the blender code base 'core blender development' I think

alhirzel 4y ago

Completely agree, I wonder if it could be proposed and crowd-funded, or perhaps supported by a grant? Link to AOSA for others' convenience: http://aosabook.org/en/index.html http://aosabook.org/en/index.html

akersten 4y ago

The lack of corporate pressures to just get features out the door and clean them up later (never) I assume is a huge factor. I agree, Blender releases new capabilities at such a rapid clip that there's certainly a solid base on which they're building that we could all learn a few lessons from.

UncleEntity 4y ago

> However it is that it is architectured internally… Countless hacks hanging off one giant MVC. And having a few core devs with veto powers has helped a bunch with it never getting bogged down with bad decisions. I tried to get some iffy stuff tacked on but they (mostly Campbell) would be “umm, what’s this good for?” And don’t even think about adding a null check to prevent a segfault without getting permission first, like, signed in blood…in triplicate.

yobert 4y ago

One of their very early decisions was extremely good in my opinion. Each blender file is saved with a complete schema at the start which basically describes a bunch of C structs, and has a marker for byte order. This means that .blend files can be backwards and forwards compatible, and in the most common case of the schema matching your memory layout, can have their data structures copied directly into memory and then only pointer patching is required. It's quite remarkable.

aliswe 4y ago
Yeah, agree. Very very handy if you are writing a parser!

cokeandpepsi 4y ago

the blender development wiki is already really good plus I think there's already a book on working in the blender code base 'core blender development' I think