[MUD-Dev] Object and class hierarchies -- are they really necessary?

[Christopher Allen]

From: J C Lawrence:
> I've been rather surprised that none of the user programmable
> servers or worlds have implement proper change control for their
> internal objects and code.  I'm not talking running
> RcS/CVS/BK/whatever on the server sources -- I mean actually
> internallt to the game on the code and objects written in the games
> softcode, as they are created, edited and programmed inside the game
> itself.  It really isn't difficult to do and the potential rewards
> are enourmous, especially if you make the logging automatic (cf the
> VAX/VMS filesystem).  To do the above you'd need basic
> reproducability/timesafe guarantees ala
>
>   http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/docs/SCM.immutability.ps
>
> so that the changesets would import cleanly with all dependencies
> met, but that's not an impossible task and there's existent example
> code out there (Aegis and (next couple days) BitKeeper) for the
> relevent (admittedly non-trivial) graph theory.

A point:

Half of the battle is source code control -- we are in fact doing that now at
Skotos where all of the objects are exported to XML and the XML is then rcs'ed
(or maybe in the future bitkeeper).

The other half of the battle is quality control. Every object in our server has
a quality control markup, each of which itself can have multiple entries.
Objects can have arbitrary quality control notations right now, but the idea is
that each "group" could set quality control standards.

For instance, before something is visible to users the "group" may requires two
people to inspect it. Another would be that the "theme nazi" has to review
objects before they are visible, or that objects have to have spellcheck
attributes set, etc. We also use QC markups are also used for bug tracking, with
open and closed values, so you can see what "bugs" are currently not fixed for a
room yet.

We have only just begun to explore the power of QC markup -- the basics are
installed, and over time I think we'll find many more uses for it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
.. Christopher Allen                                 Skotos Tech Inc. ..
..                           1512 Walnut St., Berkeley, CA 94709-1513 ..
.. <http://www.Skotos.net>               o510/649-4030  f510/649-4034 ..




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