On 7/10/2023 04:41, Bald Eagle wrote:
> I do hope that you have some notes that would give future developers a broad
> overview / flowchart about how everything under-the-hood works, and any of those
> 1000's of tidbits of data concerning why x, y, or z was or was not implemented,
> or was implemented in a certain way.

One thing that I suspect could answer a lot of questions about "why is this like so"
and "how do I add such and such a feature" would be the full commit and branch history
we keep in our previous version control system (Perforce). That goes back to sometime
in the late 90's I think. At one point I tried exporting that to git and the result
was not very good, but that was using a very early version of their conversion tool.
One day I will have to take a second look at this.

Converting to Git isn't essential, but helpful as the native web interface for
Perforce wasn't great (but again, it's been a long time since I looked. I ought to
check again).

> I think it would be great if there was some sort of short guidebook that
> outlined the necessary and sufficient basics of how to implement new keywords,
> primitives, functions, etc. so that anyone considering learning enough to make a
> fork or take the time and effort to learn the skills to contribute to 3.8, 3.9,
> 4.0 would have a definite goal and roadmap to get there.

I think that would be great also. But it doesn't currently exist, as such.
Implementing new things in the current codebase can be an involved process, depending
on what it is. POV-Ray's codebase is well over 30 years old and its structure has
evolved organically over the years. 4.0 will be more modular.

> I'm not sure what sorts of materials exist that have been "for developer eyes
> only" - but perhaps those could be made available somewhere on the website so
> that it's preserved, and accessible to anyone interested in learning how
> everything works.

There's very little "developer eyes only" content, really. Apart from the
above-mentioned commit history POV-Ray is pretty much "what you see is what you get".
Not much is "hidden". A few files are, e.g. the original, unmodified bitmap I use in
the windows splash screen, because we don't want forks to display "official" POV-Ray
branding.

-- Chris

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