In article <461423F9.14817.AFB62D@twegner.swbell.net>, "Tim Wegner" <twegner@swbell.net> writes:
I don't have a problem with this strategy but I do have a question about timing. How far along are we on getting the entire feature set working?
On the Windows side, with Jonathan's addition of the mouse support, I believe we're as feature complete as we can be without converting more assembly language to C or 32-bit assembly. The X11 path is lagging and needs some driver implementation before it will be working. I make sure that it compiles, but I haven't been keeping the X11 driver working. One reason is that I don't really have an X11 development environment setup right now and another is that as I progress through the Windows issues, I occasionally need to add a new driver method. My plan was to release for Windows in both binary and source form. Then work on the X11 driver and do an X11 release in binary and updated source.
Should we get it to releasable form and then move the language?
Considering that we release binaries and sources, I want to move everything to .cpp before releasing the source. Honestly, I don't expect renaming the files to introduce any functional issues. Maybe a few compiler warnings at this point, but considering I've already renamed all the variables that are keywords in C++ but not in C, I don't expect any actual compile errors.
A related question might be, what is the speed relative to the DOS version?
I recall getting a message from Lee Skinner (I think it was Lee) who did some comparison timings on an earlier beta and he said the Windows version was faster. This is not surprising since you're no longer using the 16-bit instruction set, which is a slower path on modern CPUs.
Do we need a step of optimizing some of the bottlenecks?
Aside from the update rate, which I capped at 10fps in the most recent beta, there haven't been any comments about speed or performance.
Should I start with the 2003 compiler you sent or get the 2005 version?
I would go with the 2005 Express Edition. However, you'll need to download and install the Platform SDK in addition to the Express Edition to get FractInt for Windows to compile (or any Windows program, for that matter). You might want to keep 2003 around if you need to compile any MFC code. MFC and ATL libraries are not included in the Express Edition. You can compile code to the Win32 API once you install the Platform SDK which gets you headers and libraries for the Win32 API. Without the Platform SDK you have an ANSI/ISO C++ compiler, but not enough to compile to the Win32 API.
On a third topic, would you be open to migrating to Subversion, or would you rather stick with CVS?
If we migrate to subversion before I move *.c to *.cpp, then the version history of the .c file will tag along with the renamed .cpp file. This would be very helpful!
Two that come to mind are versioning directories and supporting renaming, and the fact that it doesn't version individual files but rather versions the whole project. [...]
I didn't know that about the versioning but I'm OK with that.
I only suggest this only because I am using subversion at work and I'd prefer to learn one system well, and subversion does seem to be becoming more of a standard. However since you are doing the lion's share of the work, if you don't like this idea we can stick with CVS.
I like the idea of switching before I rename the files so that the version history is kept intact.
I would understand the argument that CVS meets our needs, and migrating would just distract us from the task at hand. Having said that, and having used both CVS and SVN, I'd have to say SVN is a serious upgrade that might have productivity benefits down the road.
Its my understanding that there's a tool you run on your CVS Repository to turn it into an SVN store (whatever they call it), so it sounds pretty painless. Its not like we'd be bleeding edge in this regard, I think a lot of people have converted CVS stores to SVN stores. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>