[jonmarkgo]

I actually run a MUD that stills uses this copyover method (primarily C code) for major code changes and migrations. We have about 100 players online at any given time! We've actually built in some more modern automatic copyover triggers and hooks related to recovering from crashes, capturing backtraces, performing database migrations, and sending/receiving systemd signals (among a lot of other modernization upgrades).

[_jackdk_]

Very cool - I thought it would be a forgotten technique by now. Which MUD, and have you written up the details anywhere? I'm very interested to know what a modern version of this looks like, particularly with the systemd integration.

[jonmarkgo]

https://www.legendsofthejedi.com/

It originated (more than 20 years ago) as a fork of SWReality, which is itself a fork of SMAUG, which comes from DIKU, and so on and so on.

We (myself and a lot of other awesome volunteer coders over the years) have made some pretty major modifications to the codebase. It all runs on PostgreSQL now (instead of flat text files with a custom parser), it has a built-in Lua scripting interpreter for extensions and in-game interactions, it has deep integrations to our Discord community, it has sidecar web services, and much much more...

[maxwelljoslyn]

Where can we find your MUD?

[jonmarkgo]

Posted earlier in the thread!

[draculero]

is still online? I would like to play to remember my good old days!