Hi Peter,
On 15-07-10 07:47 PM, Peter Shinners wrote:
I haven't been paying close attention to Pygame, but it doesn't seem
controversial to say things have stalled. I haven't gotten much
feedback from Rene, but I'd like to give him time to put something
together. Some of the main things that may need help are:
* Getting 1.9.2 actually released
Much of the delay is due to logistics. With the loss of the automated
build site a few years back there is no simple way to check a commit
against all supported operating systems. It also limits user testing.
I need someone to take over official Windows support from me, since I
am stuck on Windows XP. I have the MinGW based dependency build chain
working again for 32bit Windows, but did not get everything to build
for 64bit Windows. So no official 64bit prebuilt libraries yet on the
Bitbucket download page.
Pygame 1.9.2 is nearly ready for release on Linux. I have tackled the
Linux specific issues I could find, and am now going through the
operating system independent issues.
* Moving on to "Pygame 2", whatever that means
Yes, Pygame 2 is overdue. A while back I proposed we wait until Pygame
1.9.2 was released before starting on 2.0. The plan was to clear out
the Pygame bugs with SDL 1.2 before moving on to SDL 2. But I also
expected we would be done with 1.9.2 long before now.
Anyway, a few months back I started a Pygame 1.9.2 patch,
https://bitbucket.org/llindstrom/pygame-1.10-patch, that replaces SDL
1.2 with SDL 2.0 api calls. Though it uses SDL 2, it tries to remain
Pygame 1.9.2 compatible, so adds no new SDL 2 features. It is only a
bridge to Pygame 2.0. Though it fails unit tests and needs more work,
it is usable now with SDL 2 from GIT (Earlier SDL 2 releases have
buggy 24 bits-per-pixel surface support.).
The structure of SDL 2 differs from SDL 1.2. It does not fit well
Pygame's api. So I expect a significant redesign of modules and
classes for Pygame 2. For instance, the display module will basically
go away, replaced with a Window class.
This is an opportunity to replace C coded extension modules with
Cython and a Python level foreign function interface. Personally, I
would like to see Pygame fully support PyPy as well as CPython. Also,
some of the Pygame code can be separated out as stand-alone, Python
independent, libraries to encourage support from outside the Pygame
community.
* Catch up on the Bitbucket pull requests
The 5 member limit for a Bitbucket project team is a nuisance.
* Website replacement and love
* Migrate forum to Reddit (or community forum)
It seems there are still many great people involved with the Pygame
project. Perhaps I can help by getting those people the control they
need to make progress. I'm completely detached from things at this
point, so I don't have any context to jump in and try to change
anything. What parts of the project are going well these days?