JVET-K0389 AHG3: Proposed software management for VTM [E. Thomas, A. Gabriel (TNO)] [late]

The notes and recommendation recorded for this contribution are from its review in the BoG JVET-K0562.

Recently, the management of the VTM software was discussed on the JVET reflector. It is reported that the complexity of the project stretches the current project organization to its limits. This contribution proposes a new software management for the VTM project that tries to alleviate these problems. In particular, the goal is twofold: 1) facilitate explorations of techniques diverging from the main code base, 2) leverage mainstream tooling in software development to implement best practices increasing performance, stability and code quality of the software.

This proposes migration to the “git” system.

It proposes to add unit tests to improve bug detection. This would add burden to proponents. It was remarked that interaction between tools may be major sources of bugs. Unit tests wouldn’t detect these.

It proposes to add functional tests. It was remarked that is already done to some extent.

Recommendation: Migrate from svn to git (GitLab).