Deadline for CY2022 and OpenVDB?

[Dan Bailey]

Hi,

We are planning an OpenVDB 9.0 release prior to the deadline for CY2022 and wanted to get confirmation on the final deadline being Sept 1st? 

There has been plenty of discussion regarding the change of policy with the cutoff moving up to Siggraph time and the rationale for doing so is clear, but we're a bit unsure about how best to handle this change. 

In previous years, we released the major release of OpenVDB in November/December and then it was first adopted by Houdini in Q3/Q4 of the following year. As this major release is an ABI change, typically it means making any data structure or virtual function changes and locking ABI and then patiently waiting a year or so to be able to get access to them in DCCs like Houdini. As a result, we are strongly motivated to release this major version just before the cutoff to keep that window as short as possible. We have been working on improving the process with which we make ABI changes, but the extra two or three months in moving this deadline is still going to be a challenge.

Two questions related to this:

* The CY2022 draft shows OpenVDB 8.x currently - would it be reasonable to somehow indicate that we intend to time the release of OpenVDB 9.0 for inclusion?

* Would you be open to us perhaps doing a pre-release of OpenVDB 9.0 in time for the CY2022 deadline where the ABI had not been finally locked to allow room for us to include any additional minor ABI-related changes that come up in the subsequent months? 

Dan

[Nick Cannon]

Apologies for the delayed reply and thank you Dan for explaining the situation regarding OpenVDB.

Yes, our final deadline is September 1st but we can extend that for particular libraries as long as there are not strong objections from the community here.

To add one more factor for people to consider, I understand that OpenVDB 8.x is not compatible with OpenEXR 3.0. So, if OpenVDB 9 is not released in time to be integrated into all vendors' major releases from January then we would not only have to revert OpenVDB to 8.x but also revert OpenEXR to 2.5.x. That would obviously be a big blow to many who have put so much work into the v3 release.

With this in mind, we propose that the CY2022 change the OpenVDB entry to:
9.x (pending release by Nov 1 otherwise 8.x)

And the OpenEXR entry will have a note added stating the dependency on a Nov 1st release for OpenVDB 9.

ALL - Please reply-all here or privately to feedback at vfxplatform.com if you have any concerns about this proposal, or alternative suggestions. We will also make it a discussion topic at the upcoming SIGGRAPH BoF.

To the question of making "additional minor ABI-related changes that come up in the subsequent months", I want to be clear that any ABI changes after agreed-upon deadlines are unlikely to be included in the Platform for the upcoming year. The reason for this is that part of the Platform's purpose is to provide ABI stability for a calendar year for all software providers who want to make releases at any time during that year. Those providers releasing early in the year need enough time ahead of release for integration and testing.

Nick

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[Dan Bailey]

Thanks Nick, that sounds ideal. It moves the 9.0 release outside of the busy Summer / Siggraph window and gives it a little more time to marinate, which is much appreciated. We will release 9.0 at the end of October regardless of which changes have made it in and any ABI-related changes that don't make it in time will need to wait until we come to release 10.0 next year.

It is very much our plan to extend OpenVDB to be able to build against OpenEXR 3.1 in addition to OpenEXR 2.4 (as well as adopting any other reference platform updates for CY2022), but we haven't committed who does that or when that will be done yet. Always happy to receive help in the form of PRs to make the upgrade though.

Dan