[PENNMUSH-ANNOUNCE] Get ready for 1.7.6

[Alan Schwartz]

This is a heads-up announcement. The PennMUSH devteam expects to
release PennMUSH 1.7.6 before the end of the month. Due to my
travel plans, that probably means either it'll come out tomorrow or
it'll come out a week from today. The latter is more probable.

If you're using the 1.7.5 series, we recommend that you patch up
to 1.7.5p12. A patch from 1.7.5p12 to 1.7.6p0 will be available,
and will be of a similar character as the usual 1.7.5 patches between
patchlevels. You should be able to patch pretty easily, though you can
always use the full tarball.

If you're using the 1.7.4 series, we will also provide a patch from
1.7.4p20 to 1.7.6p0, but are unlikely to support it, as the patch may be
larger than the 1.7.6p0 tarball. The preferred upgrade method will be
to compile a clean 1.7.6p0 tarball (adding back any local hacks that
haven't been obviated by new features) and to move your databases,
etc. over. Instructions are included with the tarball for doing this,
and I'll be testing them myself on my 1.7.4 testbed MUSH.

You can expect 1.7.7p0 to be released within a week or two from 1.7.6p0,
and to be very similar. Patches from 1.7.5 and 1.7.6 will be provided. Of
course, 1.7.7 will diverge extensively from 1.7.6 thereafter, as it will
be the new development version. 1.7.6 will be patched only for bugfixes
when necessary.

Support for 1.7.4 and 1.7.5 (other than help with upgrading) from the
devteam will then become more limited. No further patches will be released
for these versions.

So, what's new in 1.7.6? If you've been using 1.7.4, a lot.
If you've been using 1.7.5, this is an incremental upgrade.
Here is a very abbreviated summary of the really major changes.

New for 1.7.5 users:
  * NEW LICENSE! PennMUSH versions 1.7.6 and later are released under
    the Artistic License, an OSI-approved, GPL-compatible license.
New for 1.7.4 users:
  * New @locks and ways to specify them, along with lock flags,
    including inheritable locks.
  * Improved ability to restrict access to commands and functions
  * Support for accented characters in MUSHcode and object naming.
    Locale-based string collation.
  * New commands: @nspemit, @notify/any, @drain/any, @sitelock/remove,
    @link/preserve
  * New functions: checkpass(), nspemit(), textfile(), accent(),
    stripaccents(), ord(), chr(), iname(), lplayers(), lvplayers(),
    lvcon(), lvexits()
  * Improved functions: regedit, comp, trig functions, dist2d, dist3d,
    mix, munge
  * Substantial internal improvements for improved performance,
    stability, and maintainability/hackability.
  * Telnet negotiation support
  * CPU time limiting per queue entry, and overall limits on number
    of parser calls.

Ok, you've been warned. :)

 - Javelin

-- 
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Javelin@M*U*S*H (mush.pennmush.org 4201) |           Alan Schwartz
    Owl@Rio: Manha de Carnaval           |       dunemush@pennmush.org
Paul@DuneMUSH, and Javelin elsewhere     |     PennMUSH Server Maintainer
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   PennMUSH God's Guide: http://www.pennmush.org/~alansz/guide.html
        PennMUSH Source: http://ftp.pennmush.org/Source
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