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

[Gregor Zeitlinger <zeitling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 1 Dec 2001, Ross W. Wetmore wrote:
> In one case every patch that passes a cursory sanity test is checked in
> to a new branch off its specified base and assigned a development path
> identity that allows work to proceed along this branch.
isn't that one of CVS'es features already. I mean: CVS allows you to
recover that path without the need to copy into a new branch. AFAIK,
that's what CVS is all about.

> The responsibility for maintaining currency in the long running patches 
> is up to those developers, thus they can work on the feature for awhile, 
> do a resync at a milestone, then go back to feature cleanup and then do 
> the final resync and test cycle. Clearly the more often they resync, the 
> easier the resyncs are and the more likely that others may rollin their 
> patch to see what is happening (rolling in and out a patch after a resync 
> from the base branch should be a painless operation).
Ok, for _that_ you'd need another branch. 3 should be enough though:
mainline (stable), experimental (development), and next generation (new
architecture...). maybe it would be enough to have a maintainer for stable
and the other branches would be open for anyone with a patch to write.
they still have to do their homework and format correctly for acceptance
into the stable branch.

> Note: if you merge mainline into this branch, then if mainline has not 
> changed and you merge this branch back into mainline, mainline will be
> exactly equivalent to the branch, and this will correspond to updating
> mainline with the patch.
this sounds really more flexible than it now seems to be. 
I just noticed that what you described later is really what I suggested,
only thought out better.
Especially appealing is the idea to get different projects together that
are now on their own.

So, is it worthy to switch to a new development model with the current
code, or is this for Freeciv 2.0.

Since everyone else has commented about what language to use, I will too.
I would prefer Java for the simple fact that it is more portable and we
don't have to worry about what features not to use. After I read the C++
list of don'ts the advantage over using C became really slim.
Since Java is included in the current version of the Gnu Compiler
Collection as GCJ, it should be widely available on many platforms.
Last not least, I'm planning a Java project myself. It will handle board
games. Doesn't sound like there's anything in common with it. But it will
have a xml configuration files, where arbitrary rules can be added. This
is done with Simkin (simkin.co.uk) (just discovered) which is a Java-like
scripting language that allows you to access any public attibutes of your
classes at runtime. Even callback-functions should work. I thought that
this would be also nice for Freeciv. You could - for example - give x
units free upkeep in your empire, where x is the number of temples in all
cities. You could do that by just changing the configuration files! I
think that some parts of game engine could be used by both projects. 
I've looked for current Java projects and found Freerails in the link
section from freeciv.org. Also there's a Age of Magic on the link page.
They use C++ and Java in combination with Corba. And there's two Java
ports. One is a dead link however. Do you know more about those projects
and the history of them. Maybe we could cooperate with one of them or fork
theirs for Freeciv 2.0 and my Project (which will be a game morator for
18xx
http://directory.google.com/Top/Games/Board_Games/Railroad_Games/18XX_Series/

-- 
Gregor Zeitlinger      
gregor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx