Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Serious Suggestions

[Sverker Wiberg <sverkerw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> Falk Hueffner (falk.hueffner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> 
> > I have also considered this recently. I think using a "real" language
> > for this is a bit overkill. I considered a simple language with some
> > predefined predicates like:
> > 
> > defenders < 2 : Riflemen
> > food_surplus > 2 : Settlers
> > !have(Great Wall) && size >= 4 : City Walls
> > size >= 7 : Aqueduct
> > production > 8 : JS-Bach
> 
> I think that if we're going to go to the trouble of adding some sort
> of extension capability, it should be a full language, not just a
> simple hack.
> 
> Someone mentioned "bloat".  I think this is misleading -- we've already
> got a graphical interface in the client, so adding a scripting language
> is relatively insignificant.  (I don't have statistics available, but my
> feeling is that the overhead added by adding a Guile or Python interpreter
> would be much smaller than the current client memory/CPU usage.)

I agree.

My libguile.so.4.0.0 is about 500k, half the size of the freeciv data
directory --- *and* it will be shared with everything else that uses
guile. A FreeCiv-specific roll-your-own language (as Hueffner
suggests) cannot be shared with anything else. And when it has evolved
into a real language, it will of course be backwards compatible with
its simple roots, causing gray hairs a-plenty for implementors and
coders.

/Sverker