About Developer extras -> experimental feature for sculpt mode brushes

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Hello Devs, specially @pablodp606

There is a new commit that makes sculpt brushes that don’t have icons be hidden under Developer extras → experimental → brush without icons. This approach does not expose the new brush. We have to note that new brushes are prone to be tested and when they land into Master the idea is to expose it for massive testing. While hiding it, the change to be tested massively is reduced and we might end up exposing the feature few weeks before the release and thus exposed to new bugs just after released.

I m questioning strongly the idea of hiding a feature under dev-extras, here are some concerns:

  1. Exposure
  2. We are talking about Master and on the download page, there is clear warning message
  3. What are the rules here, should the user report a bug when a feature is hidden under dev-extras?
  4. Is there a problem to keep the feature local when it is not ready?

Hope you guys will consider my concerns :slight_smile:

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Hi Erick,

The experimental panel allows developers to gather specific feedback for features that are not fully finished. It aligns with the idea of rolling releases, where master is treated as always release ready.

If a feature has no icons, it also has no final documentation. It is a bit of a snowball where lack of final documentation also prevents more people to test without knowing the ins and outs of the system. If people can’t test things properly, there is little gain from having it exposed to all the users that are helping Blender development by using the daily builds for production work.

These users are not to be treated lightly, and providing an (almost) always working software comes with the price of delaying some features such as these brushes.

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I can understand wanting to do this for the Beta period, but for the Alpha as well? Early adopters tend to have more knowledge about new features and tools because we are the ones that take the time to test things before the masses come in to ensure a certain quality is met.

Alpha testers are not the average Joe. If you are dead set on having this, then at least make it exclusive for the Beta period. For Alpha testers this change is just annoying and impedes on our ability to do regular exploration and testing.

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I have been reading developer meeting notes, i didn’t notice something like that. Was this idea discussed as a group and published or something you just talk " between you" or something you came up with to answer me?
The idea of “Master is treated as always release ready” is a bad concept because it is difficult to achieve for example right now Master is broken with the IU glitch (https://developer.blender.org/T80327) and FFmpeg update has broke video rendering at least with Windows machine for sometimes already( it is a random bug difficult to reproduce). This shows that Master should have the minimum requirement; should not crash and should always compile. People who use Master should be aware of its instability.

Now about the hidden brush option

We understand in case of big feature like new hair or new particle prototype, in this cases the work is huge, replacing a whole system. But in case of brushes that everyone can see how to use it when the brush is developed, not having the icon ( note that if you hoover the mouse on the icon-placeholder you get the name of the brush) should not a reason to hide it behind devs-extra. Hiding feature like this behind devs-extra will make it difficult to test specially if you are having random crash with the brush on your machine. And as many artist know the tool is not always use as devs intended it.
I will leave it up to you guys to decide what feature should be exposed or not. Please pay attention that we are competing with people who can throw money at anything if they want it, on the other hand we have each other to keep Blender up and running.

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Hiding feature like this behind devs-extra will make it difficult to test specially if you are having random crash with the brush on your machine.

I’m confused here, are you having (or describing) random crashes with a brush that is not exposed in the UI? If so how are you accessing it?

re: Blender/master as a rolling release software

All the examples you presented are below the minimum standard I consider for master. Whether this has been formalized or not I can’t tell. On my personal understand/vision, it is a no-brainer to treat master as a place where we aim at stability to encourage and welcome daily production tests.

Case in point, the Blender Animation Studio uses the daily build of Blender every day, for the productions. They (and other early adopters) shouldn’t be penalized for helping with the development tests by having to endure a sub-par software.

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