[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Documentation, Usability and Development

[Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 12:27:58PM -0500, Justin Moore wrote:
> > > - Increasing the number of nations
> >
> > I have made a patch. I was lazy and haven't added backward
> > compatibility. If this wasn't the case the patch would be
> > applied. Feel free to do add the backward compatibility.
> 
>    I hate to say this, but at some point we really need to break backwards
> compatability with the older cruft.  If we get a development tree and can
> do one release with that, I think we should think long and hard about
> starting to make a clean break to a 2.0 release.  Just like apache made
> some serious serious changes to their architecture with 2.0, I think we
> should, too.  Any questions about the evils of backwards compatability?
> Just ask Intel. :)

This problem is not this big. We have capabilities which does this
nicely. Trust me the adding of the capability and so the backward
compatibility will only take 3-5 hours (with testing).

> > Besides enlarging the number of possible nations at the technical
> > level there were also discussion about the presentation of such a
> > large number of nation. IMHO these can be tackled later. For example
> > with an extra field for each nation which holds some type like "middle
> > ages","antiquity", "modern nations".
> 
>    Make the enlargement possible, and yes, worry about the rest later.
> 
> > > - Server overhault
> >
> > This is too general. The unification is a good idea but I have seen no
> > patches.
> 
>    I sent in some huge patches, but several people complained about it,
> saying that I had actually written code^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
> not thought out the design enough and their whiz-bang paper tiger was
> better.  Since then I've heard nothing about it.

IMHO such a new language has to be _designed_. This is such a case
where one person wants to get code in and the others (Andrew? (and I))
want a more mature solution.

        Raimar

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