[crossfire] Updating source file headers

[Kevin Zheng]

On 07/16/2013 14:59, Mark Wedel wrote:
>  I think that is fair (although, I think you meant to say that we should
> not say that X-windows is the key point, although what you say above
> doesn't quite match that)
> 
>  Follow up question would be what should the short synopsis of the game
> be? "Crossfire, a multiplayer graphical RPG game"?

You read me perfectly; X-windows isn't the selling point. As for the
synopsis, that's something that everybody should sit down and think
about. There are various short descriptions scattered around the sources
and websites, but I think it's a good idea to re-figure a solid
description of what Crossfire is exactly (no easy task).

>  It could also be reasonable that the comment be different based on
> component, eg, the server might make mention it is the server component,
> while the client might make mention it is the client (and in particular
> the GTK might mention it is the GTK only client, etc).

That's perfectly fine.

>  I'm no lawyer either.  I know at work, the copyright year is only
> updated when the file is changed, but I don't know if that is for legal
> reasons or not (and whether it being closed source also makes a
> difference).
> 
>  I'm also not sure the copyright status with a date that predates the
> existence of the file (eg, if the file was added in 2010, whether you
> can say copyright 1999-2013 on that file or not)
> 
>  In the past, whenever I made a change to a file, I updated the
> copyright if it was out of date.

I *think* the copyright applies to the work as a whole. In particular,
the GPL suggests that projects with multiple sources say "This file is
part of Foo". Maybe I'll have a look at other "big" projects and see how
they do it?

>  The one reason not to update the copyright files is that it just create
> SVN/log churn.  That is to say, at the start of every year, every file
> would get checked in with just a change in copyright year.  From what I
> have seen, other open source projects don't do that (I've sometime gone
> long whiles between updates, and there are still files not modified in
> those projects).  It also means that source browsers or otherwise
> browsing different versions of a file mean that you have a version with
> no actual change in any way.

No reason for churn, I was thinking that we change the headers along the
way whenever somebody changes a source file for whatever reason.

I don't see any reason for a pre-checkin hook; I don't think anyone
cares about it that much :)

> Can you give an example of this header?

A tentative proposal is attached.

Thanks,
Kevin Zheng
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: newheader.c
Type: text/x-csrc
Size: 467 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20130716/0741d638/attachment.c>