preliminary plan & schedule for the next stable skia-python release (in a month's time)

[Hin-Tak Leung]

Hi,

The current idea is to just call the skia-python release which adds windows on ARM64 support (either v138 in about 5 weeks' time, or v140 in 3 months' time) the next stable. There will be one more v87 release, v87.9, just before that, with some aarch64 linux updates, with or without ARM64 windows support. The main reason is that it is increasingly hard trying to build the 4-year-old upstream m87 on modern compilers / platforms / newer python versions. It has been quite painful just continuing aarch64 linux builds, and it is not clear at this point whether m87 on ARM64 windows is feasible. Upstream Google never supported skia m87 on ARM64 linux or ARM windows, and upstream m87 was end-of-life over 4 years ago anyway. The numbering is about a month apart, so 138 - 87 is 51, or a bit more than 4 years (4x12=48). Typically, Google supports about 6 versions / 6 months. The numbering of Skia is identical with Chrome's - Chrome 136.x.y.z is built with Skia m136, etc.

The skia-python m1xx series is currentlly v136.b13 , the 13th "beta" - it is called "beta" largely, because it is not 100% ( I think it is about 93%, with a small rarely used / obscure / withdrawn %) compatible / upgradable from m87 . Originally it was thought we'd continue for another year to about v15x and ~20th "beta" to get closer to smoother compatibility / upgradability with few surprises. Adding new platform seems to be a good clean exscue for breaking some backward compatibility / upgradability.

Anyway, there are some significant new functionalilty - SVG support (and OT-SVG), COLRv1, runtime shader effects. etc.

There are two new examples "SkSL_ShaderMulti+SDL2.py" and "SkSL_Mouse+SDL2.py" landed in
https://github.com/HinTak/skia-python-examples/ , which tries to re-implements most of the animations on https://shaders.skia.org/ - have a go a running the former - it is quite pretty, honest. There will be some update in v138 / v140 to improve running sksl snipplets, unmodied from https://shaders.skia.org , in skia-python. (with v136, there are some sksl adjustments / hacks which I hope to remove).

I'd say, people give it some thought in upgrading to v1xx if they are still using v87. File issues - preferably with patches for fixes :-) - if there are important things missing. If you use skia-python for anything corporate / official / serious, please also consider commissioning / sponsoring me to finish off that last few (7?) %.

FWIW, I think WebkitGTK switching from Cairo to Skia in 2.46 about 6 months ago(?) is poor towards the eco-system. Anyway.

Thanks for reading so far.