Request for Review: nethack

[Ville Skyttä]

On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 08:36 -0400, Luke Macken wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2005 at 10:00:04AM +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> | On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 09:50 +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> | > On Sun, 2005-07-10 at 19:38 -0400, Luke Macken wrote:
> | > > I noticed that we only have a graphical nethack version in extras
> | > > (falconseye), which does not come close to satisfying my ASCII dungeon
> | > > cravings.
> | > 
> | > It includes the regular ASCII NetHack, too.
> | 
> | ...and to invoke it, "NETHACKOPTIONS=windowtype:tty nethack".
> 
> That's great and all (for being NetHack 4.3.1), but I still think we
> need vanilla NetHack in the tree as well so we can use the latest
> versions.

I think there's a way to get both of best worlds; how about this plan:

1) Ask the Falcon's Eye upstream if he's going to release an update
soon.  Despite of the rumours of the project being dead, he has
repeatedly stated that a new version is in the works in public forums
(albeit not too recently AFAIK).  Wait until end of this week for his
reply.

2a) If NHFE maintainer doesn't reply or the new NHFE is far away, switch
the Extras package to the more lively Vulture's Eye fork,
http://www.darkarts.co.za/projects/vultures
That includes NetHack 3.4.3 (the latest one).

2b) If NHFE upstream responds saying new NHFE including the latest
"vanilla" NH is just around the corner, wait for that.

3) No matter what the conclusion from 1) and 2) above is, tune the
current nethack-* package in Extras so that running "nethack" launches
the tty version, and "nethack-falconseye" (or -vultureseye) the GUI
version.  And add a menu entry for the tty version, too.  And note
availability of the tty version more prominently in the package's
description.

Thoughts?  I think it would be inefficient use of resources to maintain
two NH packages in Extras, given that we can most likely get both the
latest and greatest traditional NetHack, as well as the GUI eye candy in
the same package.