The long project finally hit its cusp early this week, and I'm still dealing with the fallout from that but I'm struggling my way along. A lot of help has come from my host, but also from generous community members (shoutout in particular to alexkar).

The short version of what happened was that BYOND was way overdue to jump to a new host machine, so I initiated that process in June. Since then a lot of delays, big and small, crept in that caused all sorts of problems just getting things to work. I finally pulled the trigger on migration at the beginning of the week, and that was when the "fun" began due to a number of completely unforeseen complications that didn't shake out in testing.

A number of glitches, big and small, have been addressed at this point, but one that's still an ongoing thorn in my side is the source code repository. BYOND's repo was set up using technology that's now not only ancient, but so ancient that the Windows software I use to interact with it on the server is no longer capable of making connections. Which means I finally have to convert everything over to Git, and that's a process of extreme pain. This is also a necessary precondition to getting 516 into beta.

Once Git is set up and I can figure out how to use that going forward instead of the old busted stuff, I can modify the build scripts and then get cracking on testing 516 compilation. This also means the next 515 maintenance release, if there is one, will be built with different C library dependencies in Linux. But the massive upside is that now that we're on a newer compiler, some avenues of optimization that were previously closed are open now.

As always I owe a great deal of thanks to the BYOND Members and regular supporters who make it possible to keep this thing alive. And boy has it been an expensive summer running two servers. However it looks like that ends this month, and next month we go forward with just one. The new server is a smidge pricier, but I'm glad it's only a smidge considering literally everything else.

Next week I expect both more and less of the same, hopefully less intense. Getting 516 into beta is high on my priority list. In the meantime the pumpkin spice must flow. And darn it, I need to find another frozen berry mix with cranberries in it.