August 30th is the deadline for new packages in Ubuntu 7.10

[YokoZar]

What this means is that whatever version of the Spring package I manage to make must go into Ubuntu Universe by then. Afterwards only bugfixes, by policy, are a good idea.

Fortunately, 0.75b2 seems pretty stable, and it might be some months before we have another release. This is good, as Gutsy users will be able to point and click.

On the other hand, the lobby clients are not quite so stable. I'm trying to figure out if its a better idea to hack up TASClient + Wine into a package, or to put another lobby in.

It may be possible to upload a better version of the lobby client later, though, via the upstream version freeze exception process. Either way, if you want motivation to power development of your lobby client for these next two weeks, now is the time :)

[imbaczek]

I think that there's quite a lot bugs fixed in svn, at least one crash bug, potential and real exploits, so maybe after replays are fixed there should be a 75b3? Tobi?

[smoth]

this version of spring has some serious breaks if possible the next version is better.

[CautionToTheWind]

Fortunately, 0.75b2 seems pretty stable, and it might be some months before we have another release. This is good, as Gutsy users will be able to point and click.

That is very bad, as the latest spring version has some serious shortcomings. While they fixed the nastiest of the b1 bugs, LUA crashes for me 75% of games, and it has a REALLY bad failure mode where i can't access the build list.

I've been playing for a couple weeks with LUA off and boy do i miss the pretty things.

Please please fix the lua. ASAP.


Also, will Ubuntu allow a future higher version to be packaged in their repos? Putting spring in the official repos seems like a bad idea and trying to appease people who do not understand the rules of the repos.

[imbaczek]

That is very bad, as the latest spring version has some serious shortcomings. While they fixed the nastiest of the b1 bugs, LUA crashes for me 75% of games, and it has a REALLY bad failure mode where i can't access the build list.

You can post crashlogs (processed by stacktrace translator) at http://spring.clan-sy.com/mantis/view.php?id=567, but do so only if you find something different from what already is there.

Also, luaui crash that doesn't crash the game should be recoverable by /luaui reload.

Unfortunately, the bug is very ugly and will require some serious debugging tools deployed before it can be efficiently found. (It may be that it is already fixed, too, by some seemingly unrelated patch )

[CautionToTheWind]

Thank you. Lua crashes but the game goes on. I lose all widgets, including the "scroll" buttons on the build list. This is on a clean install with no custom widgets. Actually i tried disabling almost all, including BA's bundled ones, and it still crashed.

When it bugs, it displays endless error messages. Those messages seem to display a few bytes of memory as a string, and that string changes over time, as if iterating over the memory space, strongly suggesting an off-by-one bug in an uncommon state.

Its the first time i hear of "/luaui reload" and will give it a try.

[Tobi]

I was planning entering a 2 month release cycle, ie. releasing around September 19th, but since this is just a little while after Ubuntu feature freeze I'll think about an earlier release.

I can not reproduce the Lua crashes so I can not fix them, it never happens for me.

I won't do bugfix only releases parallel to normal development unless someone steps up to maintain a bugfix branch and cherrypicks all non-syncedcode non-networkstreamformat bugfixes from trunk. I don't have enough time to do that myself.

[Neddie]

Once a current package is in Ubuntu, I would be thrilled if somebody could drop me a notification. I'm not as busy in the linux-sphere as I should be, and I need to keep tabs on this sort of thing for my efforts.

[LOrDo]

Spring is definatly not ready for major advertising yet. If anything the entire thing overall has gotten worse.

[Neddie]

Every time I mention it I get this response, and I push out my deadlines another month or two. I will now be ready to advertise the second or third quarter of 2008 - is that long enough away for you?

[YokoZar]

Well, nothing's stopping us from just maintaining our own repository Wine-style and hoping users use that

This is especially true if we can't make the Aug 30 deadline.

[Torrasque]

Well, nothing's stopping us from just maintaining our own repository Wine-style and hoping users use that

This is especially true if we can't make the Aug 30 deadline.

I even think it's a better solution. At least for now.
Spring is not mature enough... I hope it will be one day

[caldera]

Thank you. Lua crashes but the game goes on. I lose all widgets, including the "scroll" buttons on the build list. This is on a clean install with no custom widgets. Actually i tried disabling almost all, including BA's bundled ones, and it still crashed.

When it bugs, it displays endless error messages. Those messages seem to display a few bytes of memory as a string, and that string changes over time, as if iterating over the memory space, strongly suggesting an off-by-one bug in an uncommon state.

Its the first time i hear of "/luaui reload" and will give it a try.

my brother has exactly the same problem with his spring. lua crashes every 2nd game, making it impossible to use the menu scrollbars. reinstalling spring did not solve anything. he has a very new computer, intel core2duo, gf8800,...

[el_matarife]

Fortunately, 0.75b2 seems pretty stable, and it might be some months before we have another release. This is good, as Gutsy users will be able to point and click.

The problem is, sooner or later we will issue a patch and the repository version will be worthless. All it will do is annoy potential new users if they download Spring off the repository and discover that it can't logon to the lobby or play with other people because the version is old. If Ubuntu can't make repository exceptions for applications that require everyone to have the same version then we really should host our own repository over on Unknown Files or something.

[Dragon45]

software is never ready

[clericvash]

It would be good if we could get out a release before the next ubuntu version it would definitely draw in many new members.

It is a bad idea to package tasclient with wine for users, many it doesn't work for, me being one of them.

But in all honest, i would wait till the next version of ubuntu.

[CautionToTheWind]

It is a bad idea to package tasclient with wine for users, many it doesn't work for, me being one of them.

Maybe i missed something but i don't think anyone is packaging spring with wine. The idea is to distribute spring like wine is distributed, which is custom repositories, not to distribute spring with wine.

[YokoZar]

It is a bad idea to package tasclient with wine for users, many it doesn't work for, me being one of them.

Maybe i missed something but i don't think anyone is packaging spring with wine. The idea is to distribute spring like wine is distributed, which is custom repositories, not to distribute spring with wine.

I was thinking about doing it, but it looks like the non TASClient lobbies will be "good enough" by release time.

[clericvash]

Well do what you feel is right, but getting it in early isn't always good...

[Tobi]

I think it should only be put in Ubuntu if we can be reasonably sure we can put next releases into Ubuntu-backports at most a few days after the release (for as long as Gutsy+1 isn't released yet).