Why no recent Blender packages?

[xcausex]

Hi, I'm new to the Sabayon community but I am a long time Linux user. I am really enjoying Sabayon so far, but I do have one minor complaint which you can probably guess from the title of this thread. One of the most important software packages to me in my daily work is Blender. I am fine with having to go to graphicall.org for now to get builds, but I really feel there should be a proper up-to-date package in the repository for it. I see 2.49 in there, but that hasn't been the current stable release for over half a year now, even when searching for packages through the Sabayon website I see I can get a package to manually install for 2.57, but even that is well out of date at this point, as of a few days ago 2.6 was finally released as the current stable, I'd love to see a package of it, with regular updates as this is a rapidly developing software that just keeps getting better.

I wish I knew more about how packaging was handled here, as I would be willing to learn and package it myself. I've been having issues with finding details on how to go about it though. The closest I've seen was to look for Gentoo ebuilds and somehow convert them, but Gentoo is also sadly lacking on the Blender front. So would I have to make my own ebuild and then convert that to an Entropy package? Any help on this front would be appreciated if there isn't any plans to include recent versions of Blender in the standard repo in the near future.

On a somewhat related note, I've also noticed the lack of a package for Krita as well, I am going to try out the Calligra Suite package later to see if it is included in there, but honestly I have no use for the rest of the suite, it would be nice to see a stand alone krita package as well. I saw a somewhat recent package for that on the web site that I can manually install, but it would be nice to see that included into the standard repo as well. Though this is another I wouldn't mind trying to package myself at some point if it is not already planned for inclusion.

[wolfden]

You are free to request the packages in our bugzilla, use the package request

It looks like it is in the overlay poly-c - http://gpo.zugaina.org/media-gfx/blender

emerge --sync && layman -a poly-c

emerge -pv blender to view what pulls. Use entropy to install the deps if any.

https://wiki.sabayon.org/index.php?titl ... nd_Portage

[xcausex]

Nice, thanks for the insight/advice.

[joost]

No.
It requires Python 3. That is not going to happen so do not bother requesting it.

[xcausex]

Just as an update for those interested, here is the request I submitted:
https://bugs.sabayon.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2794

No help from the bug tracker folks, my request was dismissed as a duplicate without being given any real consideration, while the supposed duplicate (which wasn't, as the old one was a version bump request rather than a new package request) was dismissed because the new Blender versions use Python 3. The fact that it uses Python 3 should have absolutely nothing to do with its inclusion as Python 2 and 3 can be installed side by side.

I am in favor for seeing a legacy 2.49 package continue to be offered, but what I want is a separate package for the current generation of Blender which is far beyond the abandoned old code in 2.49 at this point. But I guess I would probably have to convince the Gentoo folks to fork the packages to get anywhere with official channels. Shouldn't really take much though, to just rename the current blender 2.49 package to something like Blender-legacy and then have a new Blender package that is kept up-to-date with the current stable release which really only needs to be updated about once every 2 months, which is the current Blender stable release cycle.

For now I'll just use the version mentioned earlier from the Gentoo overlay, despite that being a sub-optimum solution compared with a proper Entropy package.

[xcausex]

Oh jeez, I was just installing more stuff I need and it finally occurred to me why there was a fuss, does Sabayon really not have packages for Python 3 and it's related libraries yet? If that is the case I think my time with Sabayon might be really short if the developers really haven't put the effort into having separate packages available for Python 2 and 3, but are instead considering them as a continuation of a single line that shouldn't each be packaged and offered separately. The situation with Python and Blender are almost identical, the developers decided to break backwards compatibility to an extent, causing a need for 2 related, yet different, code bases that each justify a package of their own as they are really completely different pieces of software that just happen to share the same name because of their shared origins. In both cases, for practicality sake, they ought to be consider forks.

[xcausex]

I would also like to note that in both cases, each version uses separate folders for everything. For instance every version of Blender gets its own sub-folder within the Blender folders in /home and /usr allowing them to be installed side by side. There is really no good reason I could see for not supporting both, and the same goes with Python.

[micia]

xcausex, avoid double posting, it is not a good practice, when possible, edit your first post.

Python 3 is a critical package, Sabayon developers want it to be stable and tested, they won't throw in an untested critical package that could break entropy, portage and many other tools just for supporting Blender and a few other packages that currently require Python3.

As you can see from the joost's comment

No.
It requires Python 3. That is not going to happen so do not bother requesting it.

They gave consideration for it and as you can see from:
https://bugs.sabayon.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2766
Your request really was a duplicate, since your request was a version bump as Blender is already available in entropy and you want a more recent version (thus, a version bump).

Stability of your operating system never is a bad excuse and should be the primary concern.

If you really can't live without it, remember that you can use portage to install both Python3 and Blender, but it requires more than some experience, since updating Python is much more troublesome than you apparently think.

[xcausex]

Sorry, but you seem to of missed the point I was making, both python 3 and Blender 2.5+ should be treated as forks from their old versions, completely separate packages from their legacy predecessors which at this point are only kept around for those who have things relying on the old code bases. Python 2 and 3 can live in perfect harmony side by side, and Entropy can continue to use Python 2 to the end of eternity if that is so desired. I used to have up to 3 versions of Python installed side by side, 2.5, 2.6, and 3.0. More recently I just keep 2.7 and 3.2 on my systems, as with them I can do everything I need. The same goes with Blender, each version gets it's own directory for both system and user files, completely separate from one another, there is no good reason that they should not be supported in tandem.

[micia]

I understood your point, but even if they could be handled as forks, they actually are not, a user could be tempted to use Python 3 even for packages that currently are not well working and tested for that version, leading to extreme system instability.

It is much more convenient to just wait for Python 3 to be well tested and then push it on entropy only in that situation, eventually alongside with Python 2.
Since Python 3 is not well tested with the entropy tree, it makes it a perfect reason not to push it, not a bad excuse at all.

In my opinion it would be a worse by far excuse a:
"well, but you got Python 2 alongside with Python 3, why would you use your X package with Python 3?"
for a user that used Python 3 and had its system blown away.

Remember that you can actually get python 3 and blender from portage if you want (and if you are convinced that your system would work fine),
Also notice that joost didn't exclude at all Python 3, he just stated that it will not happen soon.