Leaving the freecad-project

Building & Packaging
21

Hi @looo

Sorry but that just ain’t going to work. I was preparing a PR, for shutting down the Travis instance over the weekend and this just feels off. You have invested way too much effort in packaging during the development cycle and now is the time to profit from all that work.

I remember when i was still a somewhat fresh FreeCAD member, there was a logo competition i participated in. At that time i didn’t know yet, the challenge itself was important, and not the outcome. In the following years that logo competition ended up being a guide for me, it gave me understanding on when the peak was reached and when i started the descend on the other side. Making way for new people, to reach the same.

Now what i am trying to say is i am coming back, from the other side, will carry you over if needed. Let me stand with you on that peak again. Can you do that for me?

Take a week off, if you are not under some corona lock down, result to things like the paragliding, just please stay safe. I will hold off the PR until May. Hopefully by then we won’t be toying with the release anymore and some more certain time frame will be known.

In addition i feel that you need to be there, finishing the migration to new module structure. Once the next development cycle start, please create a PR, obsoleting the old module style support, and let others sort out the porting over during the course of the next development cycle. It would be nice if you would provide some general guidance, for people here asking. There is an army of new developers now, they like pep8, like to restructure modules, please, give them some work. As for the modules that won’t make the transition, that’s life, it happened once already, Py2/Qt4 → Py3/Qt5.

And we are finally entering the Py2 free development cycle, and you would leave now?

C’mon, give me something?

22

triplus, as I’m sure this was not at all your intention, let me say that this sounds a bit respectless. It has to me a bit of the sound of “Come on, it can’t be that bad; take a breath, drink something - and then continue!”. looo has stated very clear that he wants to refrain from his FreeCAD activities right now; and, of course, if he doesn’t want to give it, he doesn’t have to give a reason for that step.

I think we should accept it the way it is - with great regret and sympathy.

23

I have some sympathies for both - Sad that @looo has decided to throw in the towel. Somebody should design a nice certificate, signed by the prime developers on behalf of all us, thanking him for his efforts. Don’t know if he would put on his study wall but he might.

I also feel for @triplus because looo’s going it going to hurt all of us but probably triplus efforts most of all .

24

With all this covid-19 tragedy everybody seems to be using zoom.

How about a few of us send some beer money via paypal to a trustworthy leader like yorik and he sends the money to looo for a few beers etc. (Trouble is I think he is a cyclist so maybe not so keen on alcohol)

We then have a zoom meeting to raise a class to looo and wish him well.
Time zones might be a challenge so might have to arrange two that looo could participate in.

Anyway just a suggestion.

25

Nice idea. In the German forum we use jitsi, open source, nothing to install.

26

The last comment @looo made did shed some light, regarding reasons. Therefore don’t say that was not done. When somebody is emotionally drained, trying to say something encouraging for sure doesn’t show lack of respect to that person.

Anyway, in short, @looo we are here for you if you need us. That was my point. And for sure you have reached a peak on the FreeCAD mountain, don’t for a moment believe you didn’t.

27

This thread is kind of heart-breaking. I’m glad to see concern and care from the community. Getting FreeCAD to where it is and beyond is a monumental effort. It’s no joke. It is time-consuming and without pay and it it thankless at times from a worldwide public that demands parity with proprietary solutions out there.

@looo seriously if you need something, please say something to someone.

28

@triplus
So you want me to stay until 0.19 release? I don’t think that will change a lot, although I have some ideas about the release and how to handle that on conda-forge.

@all You make it very hard for me to leave this project. Still, I think I made the right decision. Stepping back and maybe find some new motivation.
But I don’t think things are that bad. With @sgrogan helping out with the weekly builds and maybe someone other having a closer look at conda-feedstocks I have a good feeling with conda working as a sustainable packaging-system.
For sure it’s not easy to understand all the different “gears” in the conda-packaging system. (I don’t understand all of it either). Learning issue by issue is the way I got into this and I think is the only way to get a good understanding of the packaging system.

So I don’t make this a hard stop. I will try to reduce the time spent on packaging to a minimum and hope others will try to continue the work.

29

Thanks!

30

This makes me happy :slight_smile:
But looo please do not let us convince you to do something you are not happy with.

I will be the first to ask for and take your advise, but if you don’t want to engage in any of those conversations, DON’T.
Try to get the joy and fun of FreeCAD back.

Remember you don’t owe us anything, WE OWE YOU!

31

We owe you.

32

@looo very good! Glad it wasn’t a ‘rage-quit’ but more or a re-assessing and repositioning of priorities. Glad to hear from you and the possibility that we will hear from your in the future, but in a different capacity. Especially, around airfoil stuff… that work is very interesting and exciting. I hope you get there sooner than later!

33

Your expertise will be missed, hopefully things will go ok and we will still see you around sometimes…

34

That would be a good start yes, although nobody really knows when that will happen, hence until then just take some time off. You invested way too much effort in this, stay around and see it flourish. In addition if you feel “new import style modules” should happen, then you have my full support and lets achieve that in the next development cycle. If that represents too much work and no fun for you ATM, better to not attempt this for now.

@all You make it very hard for me to leave this project.

Sorry for doing that.

So I don’t make this a hard stop. I will try to reduce the time spent on packaging to a minimum and hope others will try to continue the work.

Good strategy and i guess best to just learn to say NO. I have seen you have tried to satisfy all the people needs, did try really hard to make sure all the latest and greatest libraries are available on Conda channels. Just reduce that for now, if something is not essential, don’t worry about it too much. It will still work good enough. Pace it in a way it works for you and leaves you enough free time, to do other more fun things too.

P.S. In general i am starting to feel we are stressing (the “upstreams” in all areas) a bit too much already. And we all will likely need to take a step back again, to have more fun, less work, when it comes to our FreeCAD, and to find more (free) time for other things too.