[Freeciv-Dev] Re: freeciv 2.0 spec

[Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 08:51:15AM -0500, Andrew Sutton wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 December 2001 03:29 am, Raimar Falke wrote:
> > I want to answer with a question: which open source projects do you
> > know really have a design phase?
> 
> MICO (MICO is CORBA) had a design. it's doing pretty well.

I see design principles (good) and there are usage and sample programs
(nice but can't be transfered to freeciv). The only thing which can be
counted as a design document is the start of the chapter about POA.

> > > there seems to be some concensus that having a requirement/design
> > > phase is so bad that anything written that way isn't good (enough?
> > > raimar?)
> >
> > If you develop a part of freeciv (not as a whole) you do a design. It
> > took me one year to come to the conclusion that the thing which I call
> > agent is _the_ solution (at least to the problem I was working on). I
> > implemented three things which I would now call prototypes (a
> > standalone gui-less civbot in C from scratch, a python civbot with XML
> > and an early agent using the GTK client). It would be nice if I had
> > come to this conclusion earlier. But we both know that this isn't
> > always possible.

> that sounds about right, but why wouldn't there be an architectural
> design. something says how everything fits together? a
> blueprint. you're right though, design/prototype is how things are
> done. i'm not suggesting that everybody give up writing code
> alltogether.

Because people don't like to write these. The maintainer can't force
somebody and nobody can force the maintainers. Also
freeciv_hackers_guide.txt covers _some_ of this. Also note that we
aren't alone here: AFAIK the linux kernel has the same problem. Some
documents in Documentation/ doesn't make a design. There never was
never a design and nobody wants to document the current code.

> > As a whole it is the job of the maintainer to think about design. But
> > this works by accepting or rejecting patches. And by posting something
> > like "it would be nice to have xyz. I would be thankful if somebody
> > can work on this. Nevertheless I will put it on my todo list at place
> > 312." So we know what shortcomings freeciv have.
> 
> and it still would be, except with a documented architecture and highly 
> extensible system, it would hopefully be much easier to tick off the "we 
> need..." entries in the todo list.
> 
> > So what is design? You see a problem, set a goal and thing about
> > solutions. You examine several solutions in your mind and than test
> > one or implement the best one. I think each freeciv developer does
> > this. You may not notice this because you only see the final patch. I
> > agree that it may be bad the author isn't forced to write his
> > motivations/goal down.
> 
> that's all i'm asking for.

What? That the author should write down/document his
motivations/goals?

> except complete rationalization for the server framework.

??

> >  1) it is very hard to find people which work on the same part of
> >  freeciv (the people working on gotohand are an exception here)

> that's the same for corporate development too. i've always gone to great 
> lengths to avoid working on the same stuff as people on my team. it's a pain 
> to sync changes to the same code.

I was speaking about the opposite! To get a design discussion some
people have to at least know the part they want to discuss.

> >  2) you don't see the other people face to face, e.g. the conversation
> >  isn't very interactiv. This is a problem. I would really like to show
> >  some of ideas I have on a board and get a discussion going. I would
> >  really like to have a monthly freeciv meeting to design/set the
> >  direction but this is unlikely to happen.
> 
> i work from my apartment 300 miles away from my company so i don't really see 
> my team members face to face that often. when i do, there usually isn't too 
> much design discussion. it's usually, can't get this to work, can't get that 
> to work. ugh. a monthly meeting would be nice.

IMHO it needs several people to get a good design. It looks to me that
the design is finished and you/your team members just code now.

        Raimar

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