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

[Justin Moore <justin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> >    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).

   Well in that case I'll promise to hold out on the inflamitory e-mails
for a few hours while you whip that into shape. :) Seriously, though,
we've got so much code and so many patches sitting around that are 90 - 95
percent done.  Let's get them in there.

> > > > - 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.

   I wasn't coding the language, I was reworking the server structure
which, by the way, is painful to look at.  I was setting up a simple
callback function architecture to make it easier for the language
designers to do things with their language.  I thought many of the ideas
were incredibly stupid and/or overly complex, but at some point I realized
that I wasn't going to change the outcome.

   I was rewriting the server API, not the server "shell" scripting
language.  Do kernel or libc developers have to worry about whether or not
the tcsh developers want whiz-bang features in some souped-up exec call?
Hell no.  The core developers write a generic, flexible, and powerful API
and the tcsh people use it.  I was writing the API and was told to hold
off while the other developers said they were going to integrate X, Y, and
Z, and I haven't heard anything about that integration so far.  No
patches.  Nothing.  And this is not uncommon.

-jdm

Department of Computer Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0129
Email:  justin@xxxxxxxxxxx