Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 09 Oct 2002 11:29:08 +0100
From:      Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>
To:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   src/games bikeshed time.
Message-ID:  <200210091029.g99AT8hb009974@grimreaper.grondar.org>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi

The current flare-up over src/games/wargames reminds me that we are
carrying a bunch of Really Old Stuff in usr/games/.

Yes folks, its that time of the year.

I ask myself, "why are we wasting ``make world'' time and install
bandwidth on 1970's-era games?".

Some folks will answer "tradition". This argument holds little
water. Programs come and go, and there is no firm reference or agreement
as to what is "really traditional". This agument can be used to import
emacs on the grounds that it is documented in the O'Reilly BSD 4.4
books.

There are some games that are truly toys. Specifically I am referring to
wargames(6), rain(6) and worms(6). The last two were written for 9600
baud terminals, and are _WAY_ to fast for current consoles, xterms,
SSH sessions and the like. The fact that we have had no fixes for this
should tell you how important they are to the future of BSD.

Some of the games have useful information/utility content. Here I talk
of things like pom(6), morse(6), primes(6) and the like. I have no
intention of removing these.

As fortune(6) has a strong maintainer and follower base, removing that
would be premature.

What remains? All the games that dm(6) oversees. Things like
adventure(6), trek(6), battlestar(6) and so on. These are good
candidates for ports IMO.  Folks may want to play them, but there is no
point in wasting time and space on them _by_default_. In some cases,
better upgrades are already available in ports (hack --> nethack). I
would like to make a port out of these and remove them from the base
distribution.

Let the bikeshed begin. Please try to keep some sense of focus.

M
-- 
o       Mark Murray
\_
O.\_    Warning: this .sig is umop ap!sdn

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200210091029.g99AT8hb009974>