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

[Daniel L Speyer <dspeyer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I can't find the specific e-mail I'm replying to, so I'm just REing the
discussion in general.

It seems to me that for very large new features (such as server
unification), it is nessesary for us to create a seperate tree.  I don't
think we need (or can afford) a general two-tree system, but really
massive patches may be a seperate case.

I believe the last comparable change was isometric mode.  I wasn't really
involved back when it happened, but my impression is that Thue basically
wrote it himself on a personal fork, and then it got incorporated when it
was usable.  This succeeded because Thue had the time/energy/skill to do
it himself.

No one has that sort of spare time at the moment, so this will have to be
collaborative, somehow.  Whenever *anyone* works on a patch, that person
creates a small developement branch, in which stability,
full-functionality, and even successful compilation are put aside in favor
of developability.  If my sense is right, server unification will take a
substancial length of time and will totally break the game in its
intermediate stages.  If we're going to have several people work on this,
we need to have a seperate, safe area for them to collaborate in.

--Daniel Speyer
"May the /src be with you, always"