[Freeciv-Dev] Re: backward compatability of saved games

[Vasco Alexandre Da Silva Costa <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, Per Inge Mathisen wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:
> > We can safely break the compatibility now because it was already broken
> > about a week ago by introducing a new unit into the ruleset.
>
> That is not a good argument, since mateusz's patch makes it compatible
> again.
>
> I'm not for breaking compatibility. The last time we (I) did this,
> compatibility was broken off at 1.9.0. Ideally, savegames newer than this
> should work.
>
> If we make a new savegame format, we should, IMHO, keep support for the
> old in its own .c file. And we do need a new savegame format, because
> replays and rulesets should be in there, and that does not fit well into
> the existing format.
>
>   - Per
>
> PS I agree with Reinier (and Chris) now - we should eventually move over
> to XML instead of our .ini format. Yes, I've been turned over to the dark
> side...

I don't matter what the format is. But we already have ruleset parsing
code in place and savedgame.c is written with it in mind. A XML parser
could be useful for other things we do as well, but there is none
presently in the code. Someone needs to integrate a parser in utility/
before any moves are made in this direction and I certainly don't feel
like being the one doing it. :-)

There are several C parsers with code available: expat, libxml.

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa @ Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa