Bukkit 1.7.2 and Why It's Taking Longer Than Normal

Ok so I know there have been MANY (way too many) threads on this. First off I am not Bukkit staff. Nor am I some kind of delivery boy for this information. This is my opinion on why this particular update is taking longer than normal.

First off, these threads asking when 1.7.2 Bukkit will be released need to stop. It will be out when the Bukkit team is finished. If this post doesn't explain everything, fell free to tahg me and ask me. Also things like Spout, Bungeecord etc. is unsupported, so please don't ask or talk about them.

The reason why this update is taking so long to release is because of how many lines of code Mojang changed. 5000+ lines of code were rewritten just in one update. Bukkit's job is not only to provide a server, but also a way for modifications to be made to said server. That means Bukkit's developers need to change MORE lines of code than Mojang did.

Another reason is because Mojang rewrote the way servers communicate with the clients. This will affect servers the most because of how much they changed. In fact, servers cannot be pinged the same way in 1.7 as in 1.6 and below.

Because Bukkit doesn't use MCP, they must de-obfuscate Minecraft source code themselves. There are plus and minuses to this. A plus is that they don't have to wait for MCP to release a decompiler. A minus is that they have to do this grueling process themselves. Imagine decompiling thousands of Java classes EVERY UPDATE.

This update may take a while, but Bukkit will be released for 1.7.2. Be patient with them they have a lot of pressure on them also. This isn't the first time Bukkit has taken a while to be released and it won't be the last time.

Finally, servers that "support" 1.7 don't actually include the new features. They are simple (or in this case quite complicated) networking hacks that allow 1.7 clients to play on their server. They are often buggy and overall laggy servers however.

To summarize everything, 1.7.2 will be released, but it will be released when it is ready. Pestering the staff is only going to slow down progress as they will have to answer your concerns that have already been addressed several times. This particular update is going to take a while because of how large of an update it is (aka "the update that changed the world"). While some servers allow clients to play in 1.7, they are just buggy hacks that can corrupt worlds and have been known to do other devious things. Just hold tight, Bukkit 1.7.2 is coming.

 

Now there are way too many + 1.

 

That is explained in my post.....

 

I'm not concerned that its taking awhile. However, part of me believes that the bukkit team won't release a development build until they feel it's ready for production which quite simply isn't the point of a development build. I'd like to see a development build not for production, but instead so that plugins can begin to update among many other things.

I'm also concerned that the Bukkit team is having some issues internally. Why was the 1.6.4 RB released so late? Even EvilSeph apologized that it came much later than he had anticipated:

Were these issues sorted or are they ongoing? This is a big unanswered question for me.

 

You know what will happen when we do get a dev build out, right? Everyone will use it, contrary to how much we tell everyone to NOT use it. Not to mention there are some significant game breaking bugs in 1.7.2 that we're going to be expected to fix, whether we can or not. As much as I like your black and white reasoning, reality doesn't work that way for us. We will also have GSPs jumping on this update and expecting it to work.

Plugins using the API shouldn't need to worry about updating to a dev build.

I've stated this elsewhere, we had an urgent need to move our build infrastructure to new servers. This unintentionally caused stability concerns and we were unable to resolve them until shortly before releasing an RB. At the same time, we needed to come up with a way for server admins to save their structures so when they use their old worlds on 1.7.x, they had the ability to still spawn mobs in the expected places (Nether Fortresses, Witch Huts, etc). I hope that answers your "big unanswered question".

 

I don't want to sound like a complete retard, but what's a build infrastructure? I only do 1-man programming so I don't know about big projects. Are you talking about Jenkins or Github? Does that need a lot of processing power or something?

 

Jenkins (ci) and our repository (repo). These are servers we need to run to ensure when you click to download a RB, you can actually download an RB.

 

So that means these problems have been fixed (with the infrastructure)?

 

I see this thread as completely worthless, none of this is info that no one knew before... All this does is create another thread in which for people to argue about random things such as the Dev Staff or Mojang and Bukkit...

 

Because of a lot of terrain changes, server admins will probably do a map restart. It's terribly hard to make a big cool spawn, without world editing plugins. That's a reason why this politics are really pissing me off.

Just don't mind about servers, that ignores your warns, but mind about developers, that need to start work on their projects.

//probably bad english -.-

 

As I said before, when the dev is released, everyone will use it... think of the 1.6.2 beta bug where you could join as someone else, things like this can happen again......

Personally I think dev builds should be given to devs only

 

To be fair, if a developer is using the Bukkit API, they should be able to write their plugins today and they will still work when 1.7.2 is released. There are always extenuating circumstances that may cause an API to break every update, but until we've got it near release we cannot be sure what will happen.

 

Totally agree with that, but the only problem with the 'Bukkit' release is that we can't test it in a 1.7.2 scenario.
(And I can think of many plugins/ideas that need 1.7.2 to test like logging tools that need the new blocks , ..)

If only there could be a way to let 'everyone' download beta and releases. But let developers who created a plugin/plugin planning on dev.bukkit download a development release.
That way we could still test the version as 'Developers' but not as 'Server admins with pissed players'

 

Isn't that kinda what the dev builds are for? I've always been under the impression that the first dev build after an update was a "Yay! It compiled and ran and didn't summon an elder god!" kinda thing. A server build that fails most of the unit tests for the API isn't a heck of a lot of use for building plugins against. (If it even runs at all.)

 

That would discourage new plugin developers. Reminds me of Isla de Muerta from Pirates of the Caribbean. It can only be found by those who know where it is. Only in the real world we don't have magic compass that lead us to the Bukkit developer builds.

 

Well that is not entirely true. You can always use a Bukkit API release to build on and use a Beta/RC craftbukkit.
As I said in my previous post " who created a plugin/plugin planning on dev.bukkit "
Only those who already have a plugin, or made a planning on dev.bukkit to make one (experimental).

gr,
Maxim

Well you said it: "It compiles and runs", but is still under development and might contain huge bugs that can even corrupt several things. This should only be used by those who are updating/creating plugins to let them develop before the real release comes out.

But, if you look at all these 'when will 1.7 be out' posts .. do you think they will wait?

gr,
Maxim

 

But oke.... Is there any way to update my server to 1.7.2 with the new functions and stuff i wanna build a new server and i waiting for 1.7.2 release!

 

Nor can server admins test whether their plugins will continue to work on a new update. We are keenly aware of how many people wait for us every update. People are not shy about telling us this every update.

There is a reason http://dl.bukkit.org does not list development builds until you dive further into the site. However, we are not going to limit server admins ability to run a development build if they so choose, even if its could be detrimental to their server to do so. We also encourage full backups to ensure those who do run into problems can still revert. Ultimately we want server admins to have that choice, we just encourage making sure its the right choice for them.

 

TnT does this mean those who create plugins will get to test their plugins in pre-release dev? sorry just trying to understand what you saying. Keep up the great hard work bukkit devs!

 

... I'm rather confused now. You are aware that they already have dev builds as well as beta builds yes?
(There just isn't one for 1.7.2 yet and probably won't for a while.)

If you are aware of that, and are instead asking about a 'bleeding edge' build, that's not really a great idea. Trying to develop against 'bleeding edge' stuff is a good way to drive yourself insane. I've been there in code projects up near the wire and it's not a fun place to be. (Having to change your code six times because the API is still in flux is not a fun way to spend your time. Not to mention the frustration of not being able to test stuff for indeterminate periods of time because the latest build of the core engine seg-faults on start up.) Be very thankful that the Bukkit team takes the time that they do on all their builds.

 

No, it means everyone gets the dev builds at the same time, because to do otherwise would harm the community more than help.

 

No not asking anything just a scared player that fears most server admins will just jump on an unstable development build

sry if I explained myself wrong

gr,
Maxim

 

Ah, heh. Yea I can totally understand that fear given the number of them that are currently spoofing the 1.7.2 protocol with a 1.6.4 server. My suggestion is to ask the server admins of those servers you play on what their plan is and let them know you would rather they didn't update the very instant a dev build was available.

My personal policy with this sort of thing is to run a secondary server on which I run dev builds or vanilla snapshots. The map is considered expendable there and all my players know what's up. Of course I can get away with this because I've got a rather small and unusually mature group of players. (Most of them I know IRL or from the MUD I ran for a number of years. Yes, I realize that does date me by a bit.) The only time I run non RBs on my main server is if we have thoroughly tested that build against our plugins of choice on the test server. Only RBs get to go straight to the main server without first spending some time on the test one.

 

mattrick16 I didn't read all the comments so I do not know if someone said this before but I think that one of the reasons is that mcp isn't finished yet. Bukkit needs decompiled/deobfuscted NMS code, which they don't have at the moment. (Well I guess they don't have)

 

We do not rely on MCP. We handle the deobfuscation ourselves.

 

TnT Oh didn't knew that. Well that must be a pain :/

 

Actually I should add that to the main post....Done.

 

in thought didnt one of ur team members to and work for Mojang, so cant he jsut send u guys the changes to make things faster?

 

I think all of them left

 

Only Seph & Tahg I think