When's the next release coming?

SilverNexus · Post by **SilverNexus** » Mon Jul 08, 2013 2:24 am

From about the time I starting playing Crossfire (version 1.9.1) to now, the only versions that have taken more than about a year to be replaced with a newer one were 1.11.0 and, to some degree, 1.70.0.

Since 1.50.0 had massive changes, thus warranting the delay on 1.11.0's successor, would it be safe to assume the next stable release of Crossfire will be 2.0?

Then again, its only been about fifteen months since the 1.70.0 release, so I could be jumping the gun a little bit.

Website · Post by **Leaf** » Fri Jul 26, 2013 8:04 pm

Releases usually come down to, "Has there been enough changes to warrant a release?"

Followed by, "How long has it been since the last release?"

Rarely does a release happen to fix a major bug or exploit in an earlier release.

As for the 2.0 release, some have said the combat imbalance at high levels should be improved before that happens.

So, if I were to make a guess, the next release will likely be 1.80.0

(If interested, check the history and release schedule for for how long Crossfire was pre 1.0)

SilverNexus · Post by **SilverNexus** » Fri Jul 26, 2013 9:10 pm

Leaf wrote:(If interested, check the history and release schedule for for how long Crossfire was pre 1.0)

Hmm... I see what you mean. 1.0 saw the light of day in 2001.
Although there were more frequent incremental releases pre-1.0 (0.9x.x in particular had a lot of releases), there probably haven't been quite enough functional changes to warrant a new release just yet (most of the changes, as far as I've seen, are in arch since 1.70.0, a noticeable portion of which was my work).

I was probably overreacting, anyway. Ah well.

The next version will come when its ready, and that's for the better.

mwedel · Post by **mwedel** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 4:47 am

One reason that those old versions had a lot more releases is that it predated SVN/CVS/other ways to get the latest source at any given time.

So the only way people would get bug fixes or new features was by a release.

With open source access, this is no longer the case - those interested can always get the latest source (and thus bugs & features) at any time.

However, it is true that some distros only bundle up released versions of software, and do not take sourcecode snaps (which is a good thing), so doing periodic releases if enough stuff changes may be waranted.

SilverNexus · Post by **SilverNexus** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 10:58 pm

mwedel wrote:However, it is true that some distros only bundle up released versions of software, and do not take sourcecode snaps (which is a good thing), so doing periodic releases if enough stuff changes may be waranted.

This holds true for Linux Mint and Ubuntu, which are the top two Linux distros in use (to the best of my knowledge), and probably holds true for most, if not all, Debian derivatives. Most people (unless they are actively developing something) will opt for a precompiled and preconfigured package over a bleeding-edge subversion repository version they have to manually set up. If they are just playing the game (or using the software, to make even more general a statement), there isn't too much reason to go through the extra hassle

.

Website · Post by **Leaf** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 11:05 pm

Crossfire has the infrastructure in place for a PPA at Launchpad to make Crossfire content updates as easy to install as anything else pre-packaged, but it's not in active use right now.

https://launchpad.net/~crossfire/+archive/ppa

SilverNexus · Post by **SilverNexus** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 11:23 pm

As far as I can tell, at minimum the Debian-based distros seem to keep up to date with versions in each release. I haven't had a look at non-Debian-based distros in a while, so I can't speak for them.

Such a PPA, however, would be useful to people running older versions of the distros that don't have the most up-to-date version in their repository.