[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Do you want VS .NET 2003 support?

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Raimar Falke [mailto:i-freeciv-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> >
> > [about trendy buzzwords]
>
> I thought that MDA (model driven architecture) is "hot". And better
> than XP (extreme programming). And server-side Java stuff.

I've bookmarked http://www.omg.org/mda/ and will look at it sometime,
along with Extreme programming.  I'm generally interested in "better
mousetraps" but a lot of things don't end up being better in practice.
I think MDA and Extreme Programming are, at a glance, sufficiently
complex methodologies that one couldn't trivially decide the
"betterness" of one or the other.  It would probably take a lot of
experience, a lot of work, and a lot of consulting skill to fully
realize either's potentials.

> You didn't answer the second question (Is there a command-line version
> freely available?). I remember hearing about this one: no money and
> some private-use-is-ok license.

I have a vague recollection that if you order the MSDN DDK, it contains
a compiler on it, but no IDE.  The fee for the DDK used to be nominal,
just an expensive shipping fee like $25 or something.  I do not know the
terms of the license for application development; I wouldn't expect
generosity.

> This together with some config
> file/makefile (distributed) would solve some problems. People would be
> able to compile it at home. People can make changes at
> home. Maintainers can test it. I'm not sure if freeciv.org can
> distribute a compiled binary here. And in case the user has better
> stuff (like the full VS) at home I'm sure the user can import the
> config file and continue from there.

Actually it doesn't solve problems.  You are assuming that someone would
maintain VS .NET 2003 build files using NMAKE, on the command line.
Someone like myself would not, they'd use Solution files, which are tied
to the IDE. It is possible to export NMAKE files, but this only benefits
someone who paid $25 to have the DDK compiler shipped to them (assuming
I even remember correctly.)  Why bother?

Really this is a chicken-and-egg problem.  People like myself go ahead
and spend money for VS .NET 2003; other people don't want to.  One
solution would be to recruit students who have site licenses at their
universities.  *They* aren't spending any money, and they could develop
Windows-specific stuff.  But someone has to want to bother to recruit
them.  Reality is, if you guys are all Linux developers, why do you
care?

I suppose you could put out a request to some newsgroups or mailing
lists somewhere, asking for others who care and want to get on board
with it.  That person can't be me, because I don't have ownership /
concern for the future of Freeciv.  I'll just be making some
contributions when my coding solves generic problems in the Freeciv
codebase.  And I don't know how long that will go on.  At some point, my
code will diverge too much to bother, or I'll shift to some other
project.  In the interim I'm willing, however, to work with someone else
who wants to "own" VS .NET 2003 support.


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

"Desperation is the motherfucker of Invention." - Robert Prestridge