Hi everyone! Lots of changes in Synfig’s code for the last week!
Let’s see what we’ve got:
New feature:
Now it is possible to import vector SVG image sequence using LST files (#2795). Please check this page for more information on how to import image sequences using LST files.
Fixes:
Fixed issue with UI background became white after clicking OK in Preferences dialog (#2732).
Fixed an issue when right-clicking a layer with a just opened file was showing an empty menu (#2781).
Fixed issue with using invalid iterator in ValueNode_Bone (#2793).
Fixed issue with imagemagick module didn’t importing anything (#2789).
This week we’ve got a big achievement for Synfig’s development infrastructure.
Thanks to the work of our GSoC student Hesham Essam and earlier work of Artem Konoplin (ice0), Synfig now can be easily compiled with MSVC. All dependencies, which are required for building, are easily installed through the Vcpkg tool, so it is now much easier to get started with Synfig development on Windows than ever before!
Bootstrapping the build environment and building is literally just a two lines - please check instruction in description of this PR #2725 for details. Please note that first build might take a while (as it builds all required libraries).
We expect that this achievement will help to attract more developers to contribute into Synfig code and also will make it easier to optimize program’s work and find bottlenecks in its algorithms.
And here are other news that we’ve got in Synfig’s code for this week:
This week we have great news for our Windows users - we have managed to improve the performance of Synfig for that platform!
Here goes the full story:
For a long time Windows users complained about much worse performance of Synfig on Windows compared to other platforms. Recently, we have managed to enable the building of Synfig with MSVC compiler, which allowed us to use profiling tools of this environment to identify bottlenecks. So, we have identified a huge slowdown related to the use of the “getenv” function. This issue was fixed in PR #2826 and now the Windows version performs much better than ever before! For example, loading a test file (pirates.sif) is more than 2,5 times faster!
This fix also gives slight performance improvement for MacOS, while Linux users will not see any significant difference.
Here are testing packages with the fix for Windows and Linux:
Please open another thread or a Github issue for your problem.
This thread is meant to provide reports in development of Synfig, not solving issues.
Please use --console command line switch (see here) and report in another thread.
Hi everyone! I have missed the last report due to life circumstances.
So, here goes a bi-weekly recap of news in Synfig development:
Fixes and improvements
Improved performance by reducing memory copying when working with valuenodes (#2831). The performance tests show ~20% improvement on file loading.
Fixed problem, which made it impossible to run Synfig on Windows 7 (#104).
Infrastructure
Fixed problem on Synfig Forums, which made impossible for some users to log in
Synfig Forums now have Solved plugin enabled. That allows to mark topic replies as solutions and indicate which problems are already resolved. The plugin is enabled for two forum sections - Support and Non English Forums.
Code cleanup & Refactoring
The “etl::bezier” and “etl::hermite” classes and merged (#2808) and moved to synfig-core module (#2840). This is part of ongoing work of eliminating ETL dependency, which will result in simpler build and better code structure.
Use runtime check of openGL availability, instead of compile-time (#2835).
Code cleanup, add docs and merge ETL/hermite with ETL/bezier.
Updated dependencies for Debian 11 based distros (#2837).
Autotools build: Release build now can be compiled with “debuginfo” symbols (#2838)
That’s all for today! Many thanks to all contributors who help to make Synfig better!
Just noticed that “ALPHA” blend method is only available in 1.5.1 series and not backported to 1.4.3
/synfig-core/src/synfig/color/color.cpp 1.4.3 vs master