Test, Build, Release: Streamlining Add-On Development with Automation
Channel: Blender
Date: 2023-10-28

In this presentation, our primary emphasis will be on enhancing quality assurance and optimizing the automation of the Blender add-on release cycle, encompassing testing, building, and the release process in its entirety. Our mission is to bolster the reliability of the add-on, eliminate potential manual errors, and free up time for more focused development.

We will use a representative GitHub repository equipped with a sample Blender add-on to demonstrate the process of setting up automatic builds and tests (running on Blender in headless docker containers) for initiating pull requests and merging into the main branch. Additionally, we will illuminate the steps to set up automated release processes for both final and pre-release versions.

To accomplish this, we will leverage publicly available code as well as our custom, open-source Github actions, Docker container images, and command line utilities that we developed for BlenderKit. These tools have been crucial in enhancing the stability and development speed of our add-ons. We maintain these resources under an open-source license for other Blender add-on developers to improve their development process because, as we like to say, bugs belong in nature, not in Blender.

"Test, Build, Release: Streamlining Add-On Development with Automation" by Andreas Gajdosik --

Learn more about Blender Conference 2023 at https://conference.blender.org/2023/ 

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