Maybe outlining the steps will help people understand the level of expertise and dedication that is needed to get an update out for bukkit. People started working on this seconds after the update dropped (before Mojang even announced it!) Download the new official minecraft_server.jar Convert it back to text files. These contain code that is barely readable, every thing in them is renamed to meaningless letters before they even leave Mojang. Sheep for example could be "gh" and Chunk could be "qw". Figure out the translation from these short letters back to the things they represent. The translation changes on every release from Mojang! Figure out where the existing bukkit modifications go and change them if needed - With new things added and old things changed some of the modifications that make up bukkit will now be in the wrong place, make no sense, be completely broken, or be broken in subtle ways that can only be found through testing. Add new bukkit modifications so that existing bukkit features still work for new stuff in the update. Test it! The nature of these steps make it IMPOSSIBLE to estimate when it will be done. You don't know what will be broken, or how long it will take to fix. Steps 1 to 3 are already done as far as I'm aware, amazing! I'm just an thankful user not a bukkit dev - so if I got anything wrong please correct me.
This will definitely help people understand. Good job. Although, I have one question to ask. Will the plugins we use on our servers have to be updated for the Bukkit update?
Depends. Some that use the chunks I would bet will need updating due to the new chunk format, however that depends specifically on the plugin itself.
It depends whether any of the mojang changes require changes to the pieces of bukkit that the plugins use (the API). Bukkit is designed carefully to try and minimize this so I don't expect much disruption, but individual plugins may need updating. --- merged: Feb 22, 2011 11:43 PM --- The new format just changed the arrangement on disk, as far as I'm aware. So only the loading/saving code changed. Plugins never touch that so I wouldn't expect it to have much effect on plugins/bukkit at all.
Oh? Thought they'd get stored in memory differently, my bad. I can't figure out Java for the life of me (really shouldn't be that bad, it's close to c# apparently and I <3 c#) so I haven't had a chance to look. Just figured that'd be the one thing that -might- need changing
Well I can say without a shadow of a doubt that they will be done by Wednesday...which Wednesday is another question altogether. On a more serious note...Thanks for putting this in better perspective.
yeah it is alot more then most people think i just hope it gets fixed soon lol. great job on keeping it updated and everything though something some people forget is minecraft is still in beta and they've accomplished so much just imagine what it will be like when the full game is finally released!
I just wanted to add in- that was a great way to phrase it. I do some minor programming, but am a systems admin...it's always hard to say how long something will take when your applications depend on some other source app. I just started playing and running a private server, so, I'm happy with vanilla 1.3 I give a standing ovation to the Bukkit team, and all of the plugin writing contributors. Also worth noting..I imagine, since these guys and girls aren't doing this for profit, that they play Minecraft. More than likely on Bukkit-based servers. See where I'm going with this? I can only imagine that they're working hard to get back into the game themselves, and finish coding. Again, great thanks to the team, and everyone that's contributed.
It's worth waiting a while for the new save format - the Middle Earth map I had on my server was 780mb and 200 THOUSAND files - now it's 450mb and 240 files. Went from an hour long copy job to a 20 second one.