5.5 Beta Discussions Thread

[Dean Roddey]

So, looking forward towards a mixed Linux/Windows world, I've taken the opportunity to make that much easier and simplify some things. When this all started the belief was that all drivers would be C++ because that's all there was. So the system was designed to store drivers (server side, and client interface) on the MS and download them to those machines that need to run them. But, ultimately that didn't happen. CML was created and almost all drivers are CML, with some PDL ones.

So that extra complexity really sort of ended up not justified, but it worked and there was no reason to change it. But, in a world where we might have some Linux and some Windows servers running drivers, that would get a lot more complex. Given that there aren't that many C++ drivers, it just makes more sense to install them on each machine like normal and just let CQCServer load them locally. That way a Windows server will naturally load Windows versions and a Linux server will naturally load Linux versions.

So it simplifies things are multiple fronts. And it also means the client services doesn't have to be used to clean out previously downloaded client side interfaces when you start up CQCAdmin, because it'll always have the right versions there, so that is also simpler. And it'll tend to make loading drivers a bit faster as well since they are already in place.

That'll means updates to the installer but those aren't particularly difficult. I'll also take this opportunity to dump some old, crufty C++ drivers that no one uses anymore as well so that they don't have to be installed at all anymore.

Underlying this have been some fundamental changes with how DLLs (facilities as we call them) are found, and loaded, to make it all more cross platform friendly.