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.
Missile interdiction leaves behind used up missiles with the
PLN_LAUNCHED flag set. This can lead to a bogus warning from
pln_zap_transient_flags() on server restart.
Change pln_zap_transient_flags() to ignore dead planes.
When fixing planes stuck in the air, we fixed them only in memory, so
when a fixed plane wasn't written to disk for other reasons before the
next game start, it had to be fixed again.
Change pln_zap_transient_flags() to write them out.
Planes normally sit in their base (sector or carrier), where they can
be spied, damaged, captured, loaded, unloaded, upgraded and so forth.
All this must not be possible while they fly. There are two kinds of
flying planes: satellites in orbit, and planes flying a sortie.
Satellites in orbit have always been marked with flag PLN_LAUNCHED.
Works. What didn't work was tracking planes flying a sortie.
If you look at one sortie in isolation, up to three groups of planes
can be flying at any point of time: the primary group, which carries
out the sortie's mission (bomb, transport, ...), their escorts, and a
group of hostile planes flying interception or air defense.
The old code attempted to track these planes by passing those groups
to the places that need to know whether a plane is flying. This was
complex and incomplete, and broke down completely for the pin-bombing
command.
It was complex, because the plane code needs to keep track of all the
call chains that can lead to a place that needs to know whether a
plane flies, and pass the groups down the call chains. This leads to
a rather ugly passing of plane groups all over the place.
It was incomplete, because it generally failed to pass the escorts.
And the whole scheme broke down for the pin-bombing command. That's
because pin-bombing asks the player for targets while his planes are
loitering above the target sector. This yields the processor and lets
other code run. Which does not get the flying planes passed.
The new code marks planes and SAMs (but not other missiles) flying a
sortie with flag PLN_LAUNCHED (the previous commit laid the groundwork
for that), and does away with passing around groups of flying planes.
This fixes the following bugs:
* Many commands could interact with foreign planes flying for a
pin-bombing command as if they were sitting in their base. This
includes spying, damaging, capturing, loading, or upgrading them,
and even getting intercepted by them. Any changes to those planes
were wiped out when they landed. Abusable.
* The bomb command could bomb its own escorts, directly (pin-bomb
planes) or through collateral damage, strategic sector damage,
collapsing bridges or nuke damage. The damage to the escorts was
wiped out when they landed.
* If you asked for a plane to fly both in the primary group and the
escort group, you got charged fuel for two sorties instead of one.
* pln_put1() and pln_put() now recognize planes that didn't take off,
and refrain from making them land. Intercept (since commit
c64e2149) and air defense can do that. Making them land had no
ill-effects, but it was still wrong.
There's one new problem: if PLN_LAUNCHED doesn't get reset properly,
due to game crash during flight or some other bug, the plane gets
stuck in the air. Catch and fix that on game start in ef_verify().
Where ordinary selectors specify a value stored in some object,
virtual selectors specify a function to call to compute a value
associated with some object.
Use them to replace the special case xdump ver by new table
EF_VERSION.
Move configkeys[] to lib/common because nsc_init() needs it to
initialize empfile[EF_VERSION].cadef.
other. Ensure headers in include/ can be included in any order
(except for econfig-spec.h, which is special). New header types.h to
help avoid inclusion cycles. Sort include directives. Remove some
superflous includes.
(ef_elt_byname): New.
(nstr_match_val): Use it to generalize to arbitrary table with
uniquely named elements. Use ca_type to find table, remove parameter
type. Callers changed.
(nstr_mkselval): Adapt sanity check accordingly.
(NSC_TYPEID): No longer needed, remove, users changed to use
appropriate integer type instead. This fixes signedness of sector
selectors des and newdes.
(meta_type): Remove entry for NSC_TYPEID.
(nstr_coerce_val): Can't detect typeid - integer mismatch anymore.
Was nice to have; perhaps revive it later.
