X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?p=open-adventure.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=notes.adoc;h=1baf354d694a667a9c81a3049765ad15048d1587;hp=1c06c809b8990fb3dae6cd31d65e952dcdc23c39;hb=236abc8cab5a6f8d0b1d1921800a8645dcda98a2;hpb=1b167e5e72e0b4ea4b991293abaf9b8ff1eac599

diff --git a/notes.adoc b/notes.adoc
index 1c06c80..1baf354 100644
--- a/notes.adoc
+++ b/notes.adoc
@@ -9,7 +9,9 @@ separate link:history.html[history] describing how it came to us.
 
 The principal maintainers of this code are Eric S. Raymond and Jason
 Ninneman.  Eric received Don Woods's encouragement to update and ship
-the game; Jason signed on early in the process to help.
+the game; Jason signed on early in the process to help. The assistance
+of Peje Nilsson in restructuring some particularly grotty gotos is
+gratefully acknowledged. Petr Voropaev contributed fuzz testing.
 
 == Nomenclature ==
 
@@ -60,14 +62,19 @@ a "seed" command) will replay reliably, including random events.
 
 The adventure.text file is no longer required at runtime.  Instead, it
 is compiled at build time to a source module containing C structures,
-which is then linked to the advent binary.
+which is then linked to the advent binary. There is an adventure.yaml file
+as well; this is also compiled to C code, and will eventually replace
+adventure.text altogether.
 
-The game-save format has changed.  This was done to simplify
-FORTRAN-derived code that formerly implemented these functions;
-without C's fread(3)/fwrite() and structs it was necessarily pretty
-ugly by modern standards. Encryption and checksumming have been
-discarded - it's pointless to try tamper-proofing saves when everyone
-has the source code.
+The game-save format has changed.  This was done to simplify the
+FORTRAN-derived code that formerly implemented the save/restore
+functions; without C's fread(3)/fwrite() and structs it was
+necessarily pretty ugly by modern standards. Encryption and
+checksumming have been discarded - it's pointless to try
+tamper-proofing saves when everyone has the source code.
+
+A -r command-line been added. When it is given (with a file path
+argument) it is functionally equivalent to a RESTORE command.
 
 == Translation ==
 
@@ -77,13 +84,15 @@ ugly and quite unreadable.
 
 Jason Ninneman and I have moved it to what is almost, but not quite,
 idiomatic modern C.  We refactored the right way, checking correctness
-against a comprehesive test suite that we built first and verified with
-coverage tools. This is what you are running when you do "make check".
+against a comprehensive test suite that we built first and verified
+with coverage tools (we now have over 90% coverage, with the remaining
+confined to exception cases that are very difficult to reach). This is
+what you are running when you do "make check".
 
-This move entailed some structural changes.  The most important was
-the refactoring of 354 gotos into if/loop/break structures.  We
-also abolished almost all shared globals; the main one left is a
-struct holding the game's saveable/restorable state.
+The move to modern C entailed some structural changes.  The most
+important was the refactoring of over 350 gotos into if/loop/break
+structures.  We also abolished almost all shared globals; the main one
+left is a struct holding the game's saveable/restorable state.
 
 The original code was greatly complicated by a kind of bit-packing
 that was performed because the FORTRAN it was written in had no string
@@ -99,7 +108,12 @@ in favor of proper C strings.  C strings may be a weak and leaky
 abstraction, but this is one of the rare cases in which they are
 an obvious improvement over what they're displacing... 
 
-The code falls a short of being fully modern C in the following
+We have also conducted extensive fuzz testing on the game using
+afl (American Fuzzy Lop).  We've found and fixed some crashers in
+our new code (which occasionally uses malloc(3)) but none as yet
+in Don's old code (which didn't).
+
+The code falls short of being fully modern C in the following
 ways:
 
 * We have not attempted to translate the old code to pointer-based
@@ -108,10 +122,9 @@ ways:
   and the choice to refrain will make forward translation into future
   languages easier.
 
-* There are 20 gotos left that resist restructuring; all but one of
-  these are in the principal command interpreter function implementing
-  its state machine.  A 21st, a two-level loop breakout, is not reducible
-  even in principle.
+* There are a few gotos left that resist restructuring; all are in the
+  principal command interpreter function implementing its state
+  machine.
 
 * Linked lists (for objects at a location) are implemented using an array
   of link indices. This is a surviving FORTRANism that is quite unlike
@@ -119,7 +132,13 @@ ways:
   to fix it because doing so would (a) be quite difficult, and (b)
   compromise forward-portability to other languages.
 
-* The code still has an unfortunately high density of magic numbers - in
-  particular, numeric object and room IDs.
+* Much of the code still uses FORTRAN-style uppercase names.
+
+* The code still assumes one-origin array indexing.  Thus, arrays are
+  a cell larger than they strictly need to be and cell 0 is unused.
+
+* The code is still mostly typeless, slinging around machine longs
+  like a FORTRAN or BCPL program.  Some (incomplete) effort has been made
+  to introduce semantic types.
 
 // end