Re: Release plan (was: Progress Update)

[Pierre Phaneuf <pp@ludusdesign.com>]

Christian Reiniger wrote:

> http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/
> also includes some excellent essays on that topic (the entire book is
> available online, but everyone interested in the subject should buy it
> nevertheless).

Already got it! :-)

> Now we're almost done with that and it seems as if the system is mature and
> "fixable" enough to be released. See below for more on that.

This sounds nice enough to me. I would have liked to have the current
code (however horrific it might have been) easily available, tho... As
is, this looks more like a cathedral than a bazaar (like the old-time
GCC and Emacs developments were).

> > Yes, maybe I could! I don't know yet if the licensing will please my
> > Ludus colleagues (we'd prefer something like the MPL rather than the
> > LGPL, but this is still better than the GPL).
> 
> Er, we're not using the LGPL but rather the X license (and I bet that your
> colleagues will prefer that even over the MPL ;)

I wasn't aware at all of the licensing, since I didn't have the package.
:-)

I was only expressing my preferences out loud... The X license is
excellent for us, if we want to keep any changes proprietary, we could
(we probably won't, unless we are ashamed of the coding). The MPL to me
is a good in-between, like a washed down LGPL, some "free software
activists" might like that better than the X license (but then, such
activist would probably like it to be GPLed right there).

Happy to see nobody is losing his mind over licensing around here!

> > be done. We have to work on our next generation stuff (Quadra was more
> > of a test of development methods than anything else, but it has already
> > proven its addictiveness in its previous DOS-only incarnations).
> 
> *grin*

A good advice: do not start doing multiplayer Quadra if you want to
finish *anything* before the next century. ;-))

> > But maybe PFile could be used as the resource file engine in our next
> > generation library toolkit. And we also need a better sound engine.
> 
> We'll see what we can do.

We saw a few seemingly good ones, but what was killing them to my eyes
was that they were using threads and/or a separate process. I hate
context switches with a passion. X for games makes my stomach wobble, I
really am looking forward to things like Direct Rendering.

We'd also need streaming sound, to play MP3s and sound from the network
or CD-ROMs. Our current system, apart from being a total mess, requires
doing some resampling in advance, so you have to load the whole sample
before playing it.

> > This is too bad, I work nearly 8 hours a day on Ludus Design, and that
> > could easily be taken under Ludus Design stuff. We'll see, it will
> > depends on what you have and if it proves usable or fixable for our
> > tasks.
> 
> Making it usable for *any* task was most of the work behind PFile ;)

Template makes me shiver, what do you have to say about that? Do you use
them a lot? I also do not like namespaces (or C++ itself) a lot, having
come up with my own solution for these.

> > Yes. Can I have it now? Can I? Now? 8-)
> 
> No. But is tommorow ok? 8-)

Hmm... We *are* tomorrow now, aren't we? 8-)~ (foaming at the mouth!)

> No joke - I will upload a new source package to ftp once Bjarke sends me
> his namespacified code (that's in some hours I guess). That code won't
> compile and it will be buggy, but you can get a pretty detailed impression
> from it.

And I could try to make it at least compile on my box.

> After that we will finish the serialization code and add the missing Win32
> support to the URL handling code and then go into code freeze and start
> debugging, testing, improving the docs etc. And unless we discover some
> serious architectural problem during that time (which is very unlikely) we
> will have a useable (and even useful) PFile some weeks later.

It would be nice if there was snapshot every so often (days? weeks?),
even if the thing doesn't even compile. No need to keep old snapshots
around on the FTP site either, you don't want people working with old
versions.

> As for PenguinSound, well, what's the status, Peter? Can we go into code or
> at least feature freeze for a 0.1 preview release within, say, one or two
> weeks?

Give me a snapshot *now*! :-)

-- 
Pierre Phaneuf
Ludus Design, http://ludusdesign.com/
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you. Then you win." -- Gandhi