[Ardour-Dev] Some issues with 2.8.10

[Paul Davis]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 9:50 AM,  <fons at kokkinizita.net> wrote:
> Probably yes, but I'm reluctant of continuing to use an app that
> includes yet one more (for me) useless feature (midi) with all the
> complexity an risks that brings. At least for work where any form
> of failure means irrecoverable loss. It doesn't matter if the
> problem is the result of a bug, or of the operator being required
> to pay attention to unused features only to avoid having them
> interfere by accident.

sure. but that's the tension between s/w development and s/w usage.

the fundamental errors in the design of the solo architecture in 2.X
would cause just as much potential instability were they to be
addressed in 2.X. early reports so far strongly suggest to me that 3.0
will be more stable in just about every way than 2.X. there are some
major thread related design issues (mostly caused by a library which
3.0 no longer uses for the same purpose) that exist as potential crash
sources in 2.X - these too are all fixed in 3.0.

ultimately, its not always possible to maintain an evolutionary path
for a piece of software. 3.0 isn't just about adding MIDI, it includes
significant overhauls of the basic designs inside ardour that were
simply never going to happen as part of the 2.X tree, precisely for
the reason you describe above. everyone is going to have their own set
of N issues that they'd like to see fixed in 2.X "and nothing else
altered". once you get the full set of those from all users, it
becomes reasonably clear that there has to be a "fork" at some point
that allows 2.X to remain the "stable" version while we fix up many of
the basic design flaws (sadly, not all) that have affected ardour from
the beginning.

we have worked fairly hard to hide MIDI features when they are not relevant.

that said, i appreciate that when 3.0 is first released it won't be
appropriate to consider it an immediate replacement for 2.X, but it is
my hope and belief that it won't take long for it reach that point.