[CF-Devel] Starting Suspended Animation Process

[kevin at ank.com]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2002 at 10:03:56AM +0100, Joris Bontje wrote:
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     >
     
      > > Overlays sound like a very useful feature for the large map work
     
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      > > that is going on.  But that obviously shouldn't destabilize an
     
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      > > active server like 'mids'.  By branching the CVS trunk at some
     
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      > > point it would be possible to continue patching problems in the
     
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      > > stable branch while adding more dangerous but also more exciting
     
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      > > changes to the main branch.  Porting patches back to the main
     
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      > > trunk can become a bit of a chore, but ultimately when the next
     
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      > > stable version is branched it will stabilize regardless of whether
     
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      > > the patches have all been moved or not.
     
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      I think that we don't have enough coders too keep up 2 branches, maybe
     
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      I don't understand the work involved completely but merging those two
     
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      branches together after a new release looks like black magic to me.
     
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CVS merges are typically through the 'cvs update' command.  By using
cvs update you move your view of the development tree to a different 
point in the tree, while keeping any changes you had in progress.  

Using 'cvs update -j HEAD' merges changes from the branch you currently
have checked out with the head of tree and updates your pointer to 
the main trunk.  After testing those changes you 'cvs commit' to 
keep the merged result.

Keeping two branches doesn't require extra coders; I regularly use 
multiple branches on a tree even when I'm the only coder.  Branching
is just a way of making changes to something you gave someone 
a week ago, without forcing them to get all of the changes that 
you've made in the interim.

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      Ofcourse I could run two server. But there will be some problems:
     
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      technical:
     
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      - metaserver doesnt support 2 servers with different ports on 1 ip/hostname
     
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      - my server can't handle the load, I wil have to use my workstation as a testing
     
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      server (I have done that before with iso maps and scriptfire/plugins)
     
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      non-technical:
     
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      - we don't have enough players to fill all those servers!
     
     
Of course the problems you have with players on your server are entirely
yours to determine, but it does help to at least set expectations 
appropriately.  Include in the MOTD the fact that the server is an
unstable testing server, and that characters and equipment may be 
lost.

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      Therefore I will keep running the 'unstable CVS' server. If some of you new
     
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      code crashes my server I might be angry, but nifty stuff keeps my box popular
     
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      and playing fun for the users.
     
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At the same time if you take code and prematurely expose it to an 
overbroad audience who aren't expecting it to be immature, then you
ultimately hurt the development of the system as coders become afraid
of checking in code which could potentially destabilize the system.

You want and need coders to be able to take chances for breakthrough
innovations to occur.

Cheers,
-kls

-- 
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     kevin at ank.com
     
     
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