[ENet-discuss] Specification

[Kenneth Bull]

On 24 October 2010 17:27, Lee Salzman <lsalzman1 at cox.net> wrote:
> Despite tweaking over the years, it has remained largely stable. That does
> not mean it is good as a wider-use protocol, but that it fulfilled its
> purpose, FPS game networking, well enough for my tastes that I couldn't be
> bothered to fix other gaping problems with it like its dysfunctional
> reliable packet throttling. If I had to start over from scratch knowing what
> I know now, there are probably things that I would have done differently but
> have no real need to at this point in time. However, those issues would come
> back to bite me in the ass if ENet were to be pushed as one networking
> solution to end all others for virtual worlds on a large scale, and that is
> a Pandora's box I do not wish to open, especially at what is only an expense
> to me with no gain.
>

You could treat the spec the same as the source code:  Make an initial
version which matches the code as it is now and use a revision control
system to track changes.  Programmers could then create their own code
compliant with a specific revision of the spec.  Interoperability
shouldn't be a big issue with "virtual worlds" or FPS games, because
you typically only have one or two programs (game client and game
server) which will actually interact, so multiple incompatible specs
isn't a big deal, but those who want to create some additional program
to interact with a particular system will have the information they
need to do so.

That said, Lee doesn't need to be the one to write the spec.  If you
want a spec, read the source code and write one yourself.  If you see
areas which could be improved upon, feel free to incorporate those
changes into your spec and make a patch to feed them back into ENet.
If your changes make sense, I'm sure Lee won't mind committing them to
svn.