[Freeciv-Dev] release plans

[David Pfitzner <dwp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Freeciv people,

As mentioned previously, I (and others) would like to work towards
making a new stable freeciv release soon.  (I mean based on current 
cvs, not just a 1.8.1 + metaserver fix.)  Its been a long time since
stable 1.8.1 was released, and lots a great changes have been made
since then!

The plan is to make a 1.8.3-beta release very soon (this weekend?)
and then concentrate on testing that and fixing bugs and tidying 
up existing features, rather than adding new features or other 
changes likely to introduce more bugs.  Depending on how things go,
there could be more 1.8.x-beta releases for testing, and then when 
we are happy (hopefully still early in October), make a stable 
release called 1.9.0.

(After 1.9.0, we may want to change how we do things re making
"unstable" releases more often, as previously discussed, but
lets concentrate on 1.9.0 for now.)

So, within the framework outlined above, what specific things need
to be done for the release?  And what changes should be accepted,
and which ones should be delayed until after 1.9.0?  These issues
are negotiable, but here are my ideas:

Things to do:

- Change trident tileset to be the new default, and leave engels
  tiles out of tarball distribution (but leave in cvs?)  I think
  this is reasonable based on the trident tiles looking good and
  being a good size, but are there many people who prefer engels
  tiles who would not like this?  (Though of course this is just
  for the _default_ set -- the engels tiles would still be available,
  and I think keep them in cvs so they can keep being updated.)
  Suggest trident tiles stay in data/trident, with engels tiles 
  moved to data/engels; and "common" tiles (small, intro/radar,
  treaty, space, ...) moved to...? data/common ?

- Additional i18n support, and translations.  I'm thinking add i18n
  where its is "easy", but not worry too much about trying to fix
  difficult case, and not worrying about server trying to accomodate
  clients with different languages etc.

- Move rest of ruleset-dependent help entries to ruleset files,
  for better modpack support and i18n.  (Buildings, terrain, 
  governments.)

- Change remaining helpdata.txt to registry format to allow 
  convenient i18n. (?)

- Tidy up some things about government ruleset (see TODO in 
  common/government.c), in particular fix up and actually use the 
  dynamic AI government selection code.  Without dynamic AI gov 
  selection, government rulesets are basically broken with respect
  to AI, including the included civ2 governements.ruleset because 
  it changes the position of "Republic" by adding "Fundamentalism".
  Also, helptext for governments (and parts for unhappiness and
  unit upkeep etc) probably needs updating.

- Documentation updates; eg README.rulesets especially, but many
  docs usually need minor updates to reflect small changes since
  previous release.

- Add support for version label, eg "-stable", "-devel" (cvs),
  "-unstable", "-beta".  (?)

- Change granary/foodbox handling to match civ1 and civ2:
  (citysize+1)*foodbox instead of (citysize*foodbox).  (?)

- Release issues: update ChangeLog and PEOPLE, change
  capability string to "+1.9" (after "+1.9pre"?), ...

Things which should be delayed until after stable release:

All big changes, especially those not coded yet! :-)  
Eg: sound support, fog-of-war, city build lists, various scripting 
ideas, generalized buildings ruleset, alliances, ruleset defaults/
templates/inheritance, new ruleset parsing, AI optimization,
high color graphics,  ...

Changes which are relatively small: decide on case-by-case;
eg, City styles? - not sure; additional nations/leaders/citynames
etc -- fine; settler "connect" feature? -- leave till later?

Opinions welcome, though I would prefer discussion stay focussed
on immediate issues for 1.9.0, rather than directions to take
after that.

Regards,
-- David