[crossfire] Code cleanlieness and server stability

[Robin Redeker]

Hi!

On Sun, Feb 26, 2006 at 11:09:16PM -0800, Mark Wedel wrote:
> Alex Schultz wrote:
> > Mark Wedel wrote:
> > 
> >>  Actually, the server has been relatively stable (in terms of crashes) 
> >> recently, IMO.
> >>  
> >>
> > Well, lately it has been reletively crash free compared to some other 
> > times in the past, though compared to many other applications and such, 
> > crossfire does seem to be a bit flakier both bug and crash wise.
> 
>   Perhaps, but this is sometimes hard to measure (and depends what we compare it 
> against).
> 
>   However, IMO, there is no such thing as having the server too stable.  I doubt 
> anyone would complain if it could run for years at a time.
> 

I want to say, that crossfire is _not_ 'relatively' stable. We are
running cf.schmorp.de. The server crashes so often that we have to run crossfire in a 
loop so it restarts automatically after a crash. We also disabled the
weather system because the crashes. 

And this is NOT hard to measure. Maybe if you compare it agains the java
editor or Mozilla it really doesn't crash that much... but the aim
should not be to be as crash free as much crashing software, the aim
should be as crash free as possible. 

And there is no week we not find and fix a bug in the server code. Most
surprisingly the bugs aren't hard to find, they are pretty easy, things
like: Map access outside the map can be easily fixed by looking at the
core dump.

eg. the forked lightning patch i submitted 5 days ago. (crash occured
when the lighning wanted to fork on map boundaries)

And also the patch i just submitted to sourceforge is just a fix of
out-of-boundaries access...

(btw. it would be easier for us to submit those patches directly to the
mailing list)

I hope i can find the time to submit our bug fixes to the sourceforge
tracker, it would be much easier to just drop a mail to a mailing list
than logging in at sf.net, finding the correct tracker, filling in the
forms, adding the file and submitting it.



Another problem was with the perl plugin that was just applied. The link
http://data.plan9.de/cfperl.diff explictly said:

    See http://cvs.schmorp.de/browse/cf.schmorp.de/crossfire/plugins/cfperl/,
    but please contact cf at schmorp.de before copying it.

We were _not_ contacted, the result is a broken perl plugin in crossfire
now which doesn't build correctly.

cya,
Robin

-- 
elmex at ta-sa.org / robin at nethype.de / r.redeker at gmail.com
Robin Redeker