[MUD-Dev] Re: [IDEAS] Starting from scratch

[T. Alexander Popiel]

In message:  <45760210 at lostics.demon.co.uk>
             "Ross Nicoll" <rnicoll at calmar-mud.com> writes:

>Reminds me of a thought I had for my MUD. The MUD, whenever we change anything
>in the code (it's a Diku style MUD, most of the stuff is in code), obviously
>has to go through a reboot. I was wandering about having the data for
>connections written out with the database (with sanity checking on load, of
>course, incase something goes wrong after the database is saved), then have
>the server load the new binary over itself with one of the exec() functions.
>
>The player would get "The server is rebooting, please wait" or similar...

This is, unfortunately, non-portable... and (under various flavors of
unix, where I've implemented it) you need to diddle fcntls on the sockets
to get them to stick around through the exec(), while diddling the fcntls
on (or closing) everything else to make sure they _don't_ stick around
through the exec().  It's a bit of a nuisance.

However, it's a very handy feature when it works. :-)  Drastically
reduces disruption for code updates on a running game.

- Alex