Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

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chrisb
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Re: Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

Post by chrisb »

etyrnal wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 11:23 am I start EVERY SINGLE project with it.
You can of course 0.20 until things have settled. And things will most probably be better then.
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GeneFC
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Re: Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

Post by GeneFC »

etyrnal wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 11:23 am whatever happened to, *if it isn't broken don't fix it"?
This is one of the weirdest "improvements" in a long time.

The topic was first raised on the forum on 17 March. A proposal to remove the Image WB had apparently been in the works for the past month or so, following a complaint at the in-person FreeCAD meeting held a few weeks ago.

viewtopic.php?t=76884

There was no previous forum discussion, but it seems there was some ongoing discussion on GitHub in one of the 860 current issues (!!!!)

I participated in that forum topic and tried to solicit more user input on the important features to be kept, before any coding started. Unfortunately I did not realize the code work was already more or less complete, with a very limited set of carry-forward Image WB features.

I was basically told to shut up. It was already a done deal. Go to GitHub and make comments there.

The very next day the PR was activated and the Image WB was gone, with a very limited replacement in the FreeCAD core.

The GitHub conversation shows that issues were raised about the lack of functionality, but the crowning comment was,

"Ok, then let's merge and immediately open an issue to redesign the tool."

Huh????

I understand the code was messy, and the image operations did not deserve to be a workbench. However, this was completely non-critical change, at least as far as timing. A week or two to iron out the requirements would have caused zero problems.

Yes, I think the new development strategy of merge quickly, test and redesign later, is broken.

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Re: Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

Post by LHC »

I've been following along here and also tend to use the image/scaling a lot. I am on windows and for some reason the weekly development offerings have not included windows options lately so I am sitting on the sidelines and using an older weekly created before the removal of the image workbench. It's 0.21.31850. I'm looking forward to trying out the new developments that have taken place since that version when (if) the windows conda versions reappear in the weekly developments. I fully understand things like this can happen so I have always kept a rolling cycle of 3 weeklies on my computer so I can backtrack if needed. I have to be honest this is the first time in 2 years I have had to do it.
Many thanks to all that are working on this.
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Shalmeneser
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Re: Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

Post by Shalmeneser »

0.21 is not a stable version, things can change.
Keep different versions in case of problem.

New Image wb will be better.
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onekk
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Re: Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

Post by onekk »

As it is not infrequent that endlessly discussions will block any improvement, IMHO this way of developing is more visible and less verbose.

If not every change will be a long debate without any code change, bothering developers and make things immutable.

A week of malfunctioning (you could use the stable version to avoid these hassles) that will lead in a more compact and maintainable codebase is not a big price to pay.

You have to break eggs to make a cake.

It is however despite some users use it a marginal change, probably unnoticed by many FC users.

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Re: Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

Post by bgma1961 »

onekk wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 5:45 pm
For my part, it's not that you want to redo something that bothers me, but the way it's done.
To remove something that works without having a working solution, it disturbs. The question is, if it had been asked before, if the users are interested in the change.
I think this whole discussion wouldn't be happening if the solution had been completed before Image WB was removed.
And saying to use an old version means that many errors are not detected at an early stage.ed at an early stage.
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Re: Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

Post by chennes »

bgma1961 wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:20 pm I think this whole discussion wouldn't be happening if the solution had been completed before Image WB was removed.
We are working towards a development model with shorter, faster iterations. We are trying to avoid situations we've had in the past where seeking a "feature-complete" solution has resulted in unreviewable PRs spanning tens of thousands of lines. This new-to-us strategy has two consequences:

First, we are still learning how to do it properly, and sometimes we are going to make missteps. We hope to learn from those, and do better next time.

Second, sometimes we are indeed going to take a step or two backward before we can go forward again. Running a development version requires a certain tolerance for this. With faster iterations, hopefully we can identify these areas and clean them up quickly. Thanks to everyone on 0.21dev for using it, testing it, and most importantly reporting the issues with it (as in this topic). This is the process that helps us iterate quickly in the first place.
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chrisb
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Re: Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

Post by chrisb »

bgma1961 wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:20 pm I think this whole discussion wouldn't be happening if the solution had been completed before Image WB was removed.
And saying to use an old version means that many errors are not detected at an early stage.ed at an early stage.
I don't quite understand your way of arguments. On one side we should wait, and on the other side we should test early, and third you don't want to use a previous version :? .
There was a short discussion about removal, but there was no good reason to wait much longer, because everybody thought it was a good idea to use the well known import for this. Werner did the basics and within a couple of days there was everything available to continue, even if not all the planned goodies are available yet.

Importing images doesn't seem to be an extremely common work to do, not as inserting geometric elements in a sketch or similar. It is usually at the start of a new object, and for a few days it may indeed be ok to use the previous version for that and then continue with the bleeding edge developer version.
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Re: Image Workbench is missing on the latest Weekly.

Post by easyw-fc »

very nice, it seems to work very well and user friendly.
Thx as always
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