[OSM-dev] Tirex vs Renderd

[Kai Krueger]

Hello,

with the recent appearance of tirex there are now at least two, with the 
python version of renderd 3, but probably more implementations of a 
rendering backend. All attempt to roughly do the same, i.e. take 
requests from a webserver or other program and render them. So the 
question is what is the future outlook for each and the relation between 
them? I.e. is tirex supposed to replace renderd and tile.osm.org will 
eventually switch? Or was tirex just something geofabrik threw together 
for a particular client and renderd should remain the "default"? Are 
they intended to solve the same problem and "compete for the same 
market" or does each have their own niche for which they are optimized for?

This is less of a question though regarding using renderd vs tirex but 
more of a question of where the future lies and thus for which to 
develop new features. It would be a shame and rather inefficient to put 
in effort to develop features for something that turns out to be a dead 
end and my concern is to "fracture" the not directly large pool of 
developers for renderd/tirex.

Yes, sometimes competition can be a good thing and thanks to it all 
being opensource one can fork and merge at will, but I would be 
interested to hear how others involved see the situation and help 
potential contributors to make a informed decision to which project best 
to contribute to.

Kai