News reporting merges news items into recent items with same contents,
until their count reaches 127. Raise that limit to 65535, by making
struct nwsstr member nws_ntm unsigned short. Size of struct nwsstr
stays the same on all common machines.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Several headers define macros that use ef_ptr() without including
"file.h". Fix that. Drop redundant inclusions elsewhere.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
TREATIES has issues:
* Treaties can cover attack, assault, paradrop, board, lboard, fire,
build (s|p|l|n) and enlist, but not bomb, launch, torpedo and
enlistment centers.
* Usability is very poor. While a treaty is in effect, every player
action that violates a treaty condition triggers a prompt like this:
This action is in contravention of treaty #0 (with Curmudgeon)
Do you wish to go ahead anyway? [yn]
If you decline, the action is not executed. If you accept, it is.
In both cases, your decision is reported in the news.
You cannot get rid of these prompts until the treaty expires.
* Virtually nobody uses them.
* Virtually unused code is buggy code. There is at least one race
condition: multifire() reads the firing sector, ship or land unit
before the treaty prompt, and writes it back after, triggering a
generation oops. Any updates made by other threads while trechk()
waits for input are wiped out, triggering a seqno mismatch oops.
* The treaty prompts could confuse smart clients that aren't prepared
for them. WinACE isn't, but is reported to work anyway at least
common usage. Ron Koenderink (the WinACE maintainer) suspects there
could be a few situations where it will fail.
This feature is not earning its keep. Remove it. Drop command
treaty, consider treaty, offer treaty, xdump treaty, reject treaties.
Output of accept changed, obviously.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Why upgrade? I'm not a lawyer, but here's my take on the differences
to version 2:
* Software patents: better protection against abuse of patents to
prevent users from exercising the rights under the GPL. I doubt
we'll get hit with a patent suit, but it's a good move just on
general principles.
* License compatibility: compatible with more free licenses, i.e. can
"steal" more free software for use in Empire. I don't expect to steal
much, but it's nice to have the option.
* Definition of "source code": modernization of some details for today's
networked world, to make it easier to distribute the software. Not
really relevant to us now, as we normally distribute full source code.
* Tivoization: this is about putting GPL-licensed software in hardware,
then make the hardware refuse to run modified software. "Neat" trick
to effectively deny its users their rights under the GPL. Abuse was
"pioneered" by TiVo (popular digital video recorders). GPLv3 forbids
it. Unlikely to become a problem for us.
* Internationalization: more careful wording, to harden the license
outside the US. The lawyers tell us it better be done that way.
* License violations: friendlier way to deal with license violations.
This has come out of past experience enforcing the GPL.
* Additional permissions: Probably not relevant to us.
Also include myself in the list of principal authors.
Member nws_uid is unused since the commit before previous. Remove it.
Member nws_seqno is of marginal value, because we write news only
through ncache[], and thus aren't prone to the errors sequence numbers
can catch. Remove it.
Make timestamp selector virtual, computing nws_when + nws_duration,
and remove member nws_timestamp. Impact:
* In ncache(), the removed timestamp equals nws_when + nws_duration,
both for new news and updated news. No change.
* delete_old_news() becomes invisible. Before, its move of unexpired
news to the beginning of the news file touched all the timestamps.
That was unwanted, because the move does not change news, only their
storage. Improvement.
* empdump no longer flags the imported news changed via the timestamp.
This is somewhat unfortunate. Document as bug.
With these members removed, struct nwsstr no longer matches struct
emptypedstr, so clear news table flag EFF_TYPED and remove union
empobj_storage member news. This loses the automatic maintenance of
member ef_type via struct emptypedstr. Remove ef_type as well.
This shrinks struct nwsstr from 20 to 12 bytes on common 32 bit
machines, and from 32 to 16 bytes on common 64 bit machines. Since
the server doesn't map the whole news file (EFF_MAP is off), this
reduces I/O, while the table's memory use remains the same.
Historical note: struct nwsstr is now pretty much what it was back in
BSD Empire 1.1. Members ef_type and nws_uid go back to Empire 3 (for
C_SYNC?). v4.3.12 added member nws_timestamp, which doubled the size
on common 64 bit machines. v4.3.15 added nws_seqno.
This oopses on output dependency violations, e.g. two threads doing a
read-modify-write without synchronization, or the one thread nesting
several read-modify-writes. Such bugs are difficult to spot, and tend
to be abusable. I figure we have quite a few of them.
New struct emptypedstr member seqno. Make sure all members of unit
empobj_storage share it. Initialize it in files: main() and
file_sct_init(). Set it in ef_blank() and new ef_set_uid() by calling
new get_seqno(). Use ef_set_uid() when copying objects: swaps(),
doland(), doship(), doplane(), dounit(), delete_old_news(). Step it
in ef_write() by calling new new_seqno().
Factor do_read() out of fillcache() to make it available for
get_seqno().
Make sure all members of unit empobj_storage share it.
Add matching timestamp member to struct comstr, struct empobj, struct
gamestr, struct lonstr, struct natstr, struct nwsstr, struct trdstr,
struct trtstr. The timestamp isn't yet set for these. To be fixed.
Move the timestamp member to the right place in struct lndstr, struct
loststr, struct realmstr, struct nukstr, struct plnstr, struct sctstr,
struct shpstr.
New struct emptypedstr to avoid depending on empobj.h there.
Remove now superfluous manual initializations elsewhere.
This doesn't fix any missing initializations.
Make sure all members of unit empobj_storage share uid in addition to
ef_type.
Add matching uid member to struct gamestr, struct natstr and struct
sctstr, and set them.
Swap struct empobj members uid and own to make that easier, and update
struct comstr, struct lndstr, struct lonstr, struct loststr, struct
nwsstr, struct nukstr, struct plnstr, struct realmstr, struct shpstr,
struct trdstr, struct trtstr accordingly.
Note that the uid isn't properly set for struct nwsstr, struct lonstr,
struct trdstr, struct comstr and struct loststr. To be fixed.
undocumented feature: When a buyer didn't have enough money at the
time of the trade, the seller *automatically* granted a high-interest,
medium term loan for up to 90% of the price. This is just a silly
trap for unwary sellers and buyers alike.
(N_FIN_TROUBLE, N_CREDIT_JUNK): Unused, remove.
(rpt): Update accordingly.
(empfile): Correctly initialize members cids, csize, fids for all
EFF_STATIC tables except EF_SHIP_CHR, EF_PLANE_CHR, EF_LAND_CHR,
EF_NUKE_CHR, EF_META and the symbol tables.
