History of StdLib 6.12?

Technical Development
1

Exploring the contents of Standard Library 6.12 turns up a number of design details that are not well-documented. It is clear that significant changes have been made since the 6/11 version.

Who originally wrote all of these changes? What was the timeline for development? Is there any documentation beyond the items already captured in the sticky post of I6 resources that are relevant to understanding the library’s current contents, or is it simply a matter of reading and deciphering the existing code?

2

Most of the changes between 6/11 and 6/12 were taken from https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/inform-2006. That was an abortive attempt to produce Inform 6.40 that fizzled out in 2006. I obtained the CVS repository from @DavidK (I think) in 2015 and converted it to Git to support my effort to get the Standard Library up to date.

The CVS repository implements patches and suggestions found at https://inform-fiction.org/patches/library.html and https://inform-fiction.org/suggestions/index.html. I also implemented items from those two sources that the CVS didn’t.

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3

In other words, a patchwork to be sorted out, I’m correct ?

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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4

The inform-2006 commit log shows contributions from (in descending order of quantity of commits):

Cedric Knight
Roger Firth
David Kinder
Jim Fisher
David Griffith
Michael Coyne

Is that correct?

Also, it looks like the LibraryExtensions subsystem was put in place by Roger Firth on Jan 12 2004. Is that correct?

5

If I recall correctly, all that 2004-2006 work was imported to Git from an old CVS repository. What we know is essentially what’s in the commit log.

6

Correct. I teased out changes to the library only and tried to document them the best I could.

7

Thanks.

I’m an historian, and if you need an hand in sorting out things, I’m available.

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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