Re: Debian 2.2 Release.
On Fri, Jun 30, 2000 at 09:40:51PM -0500, John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> was heard to say:
> > Someone claimed that it's not usable online with servers because they are
> > 1.10 and 1.9 version cannot connect to them. This is a different question
> > from stability woody vs potato version.
>
> This is incorrect. Anybody can, and frequently do, run civserver. To
> say that "foo is not usable because one particular server bar is
> newer" is totally silly. True, older freeciv will not work with newer
> server, but that does not mean that older versions of freeciv are
> totally useless. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Let me explain the situation: Freeciv is a network game. To play a network
game, you need to have a client, and you need to have a server. Now, some
people (like me) generally only play against friends or against computers.
The old client works fine for this. Other people, however, prefer to challenge
random opponents on the Internet. In fact, from my observations on mailing
lists and so on, this may well be the primary way in which Freeciv is used.
In order to do this, you have to have a client and server with compatible
protocols -- which generally means the same version. Most people (other than
those using the stock Debian packages) use up-to-date versions of the software,
or at least not terribly obsolete versions.
The most recent Freeciv version is two major releases (not major version
numbers, but versions are arbitrary) ahead of the version in potato. A quick
check on the metaserver -- the primary place for finding Civ games -- shows two
servers already running 1.11.0, one running 1.10.4 (a prerelease to 1.11.0),
and the rest running 1.10.0. None of these will work with the version of
civclient in potato. And it is likely that the development team will release
at least one more revision before the end of the year. Hopefully potato will
be released by then, but its users will still be stuck with upgrading
Yet Another package into usability by hand.
In other words: if client foo cannot connect to server bar, AND server bar
is the official replacement for the server client foo *could* connect to, AND
the server for client foo is no longer in use because server bar provides
much better features and less bugs than its predecessor, then that is a
problem. (I guess you could say that the Freeciv team is unintentionally
using Microsoft's tactics against earlier versions of their own software :) )
Personally, I'm prepared to download the Debian source package and compile
it on old systems if necessary. Just because we shouldn't break our release
cycle for this, though, doesn't mean you can brush it off as not a problem
for the users. It may be that the necessity of getting a release out
outweighs their needs, but brushing them off like that is 'totally silly'.
I'm crossing my fingers (metaphorically :) ) and hoping the 'testing'
distribution deals with this problem in the future. It will almost certainly
deal more effectively with the problem, though, than sticking our fingers in
our ears and loudly proclaiming that there is no problem when confronted with
complaints about it.
Regards,
Daniel
--
/----------------- Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@brown.edu> -----------------\
| f u cn rd ths, | "You mean, you'll drop your rock and |
| u cn gt a jb s | I'll drop my sword and we'll just try to |
| a cmptr prgrmr. | kill one another like civilized people?" |
| | -- "The Princess Bride" |
\------- Listener-supported public radio -- NPR -- http://www.npr.org --------/
Reply to: