SharpDX changes in maintenance

Hi All!

This is an important message to all SharpDX users.

In a previous news entitled Changes in Support and Community, I explained that SharpDX project was starting to migrate to a more oriented community project, and that I would progressively reduce my investment on the project in terms of support, bug fixing and new APIs.

So far, the community approach has not reached my ideal expectations (you can have a look at the statistics) but I have been quite happy to get some strong hand to help me on this project. Specially artiom which has been able to bring some new APIs (Tollkit.Input), helping with some bug fixes and trying to help as much as he can on the forum, along some other SharpDX users that are also trying to help the recurrent wanabee "Hey, I'm completely new to DirectX and SharpDX, help me!".  Deep thanks to all of them!

The current status of SharpDX is now stable. While some more high level APIs like the Toolkit could get lots of additional features, almost 100% of the DirectX API is implemented, and that's a huge API. SharpDX is even providing some external APIs that are not part of DirectX, like WIC or MediaFoundation. Also, there is little chance that we will get a new version of DirectX, at most, some updates when a new OS desktop/rt/phone version will be released, but hopefully nothing that will break the automatic code generator.

I have been working almost 3 years on SharpDX, that's quite an investment, considering that this is "just" a wrapper API! Also, as I'm in the process of working on a new super exciting project, and this project will require my whole spare time and considering that SharpDX is now fully mature, I have decided to switch to a chairman mode and will let SharpDX community handle the evolution of the project - while keeping a close eye on SharpDX on any important design changes.

Thus, I have decided with Artiom that he will help to smooth the transition. Artiom will be able to handle the pull requests, access to the repositories, moderate the forum, as much as I trust him. Of course, It is absolutely not possible for Artiom to handle the whole thing by himself, so I would really be happy if some people could give the project some strong hand!

As a consequence, by the end of June 2013, the following things will be done:

1. Release of the 2.5 version. This will be exactly what is already available through the dev package, unless there is a showstopper bug.
2. Close SharpDX google code to focus only on github repository. We will keep the url but It will be only used to redirect people to github or the main SharpDX web site.
   1. All issues will be migrated to github
   2. The source code on google code will no longer be available
3. Continous Integration server will still be running on my machine. Build results will be sent to Artiom.

SharpDX is a strong open-source project, It is used by several higher-level frameworks - including MonoGame, DeltaEngine, Paradox and lots of released games are using it but It needs a community to help things to get fixed, improved or to help newcomers jumping into using it. That's a tough task and this cannot be handled by a single person!

So contribute, contribute, contribute, whatever is your big, modest or small contribution!

Thanks,
Best regards,
xoofx