ASWF Python 3 Working Group

Date

10 August 2020

Review action points for last meeting
Current Blockers?
- What’s blocking people from doing the python 3 conversion?
- Ollie
  - when will we have python3 in various DCCs?
  - When will Python2 go away in DCCs?
Status Updates / Progress
- Vendor Representation
  - Representation from SideFX, Foundry
  - Hello Robert Vinluan, SideFX

Robert
- Production Version of Python3 for Houdini
- Late 3rd/ Early 4th Quarter
- Python2 will still be available for the next release.
- Still keeping it open for the 2021 release will probably still have python2+3
- builds, depending on industry adoption.
- eg. Houdini19 (this year) and Houdini20 (next year) will likely both 2+3.
- Houdini19 for sure.
- Houdini20 TBD on industry uptake.
Ollie
- Vendors may or may not be so generous
- Python2 support removed in Maya2022 per Autodesk
- Isotropix as well.
- Shows will defer as much as possible.
Ryan
- Conversion will never get done when left up to show timelines.
Ollie
- Vendor that locks down first delivers an ultimatum to production.
Ashley
- Engineers need to convince the studios that we need to spend our time moving to python3 to get new versions of DCCs
- Python3 will not be important to shows until Python2 goes away.
Robert
- We would love to drop python2, but industry will drive the needs.
- Python3 SIGGRAPH?
- VFX Reference Platform BOF
- ASWF Open Source, Python3 will be discussed
- Python3.8 likely will be the version in the next platform release.
Mark
- Python 3.8 has a new compatibility feature to allow broader compatibility between python3 versions. Headers look for a special define and exclude struct details to define a minimal ABI for compatibility.