[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#7399) RiverBoats

["Per I. Mathisen" <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7399 >

On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Guest wrote:
> Gamers will eventually want to bend the rules that they are conformed to
> - the easy acces to the rules, gives open source project great
> advantages in fullfilling these needs - therfore, in my opinion, it is
> preferable to be making general code that can take care of rules in as
> general way as possible.

We are moving towards more general rules, but we also need to look at
speed, code maintainability and stability. In particular stability has
been hard with this particular code, and stability is very important.

> Perhaps it could be an idea to split the options up into 'experimental'
> and 'stable' options. And then in the stable release versions of freeciv
> have experimental options turned of by default, and make it impossible
> (or hard) to change the experimental options on the server.

We have poor experience with such experimental code hanging around in cvs
from the past. It is not used, and then suffer bit rot. All it does is
making it more difficult to make new patches, as every patch must take
into consideration every other feature that might interact with the patch.

*If* the riverboat feature should go in, then it should be done properly
and be made part of the default ruleset.

In particular, I want to be assured that the patch does not cause bugs
related to attacks and transportation. I see no code in the patch that
handles this, and I can't quite believe it would work without changes.

  - Per