Otter 0.7.0 - Online Table Top Environment Renderer

[Ian Jackson]

I am pleased to announce Otter 0.7.0.  The changelog is below.

The new ssh access feature enables full participation by users who
don't have a shell account on the game server.  (Albeit that currently
there is no officially distributed binary of the management client
tool.)

The new templating feature makes game specs shorter and easier to
write and edit.


Otter is a system for playing board games online, but it is not like
most other such systems.  In the words of the README:

  It does not know (nor does it need to know) the rules of the game you
  are playing.  Instead, it lets you and your friends play with common
  tabletop/boardgame elements such as hands of cards, boards, and so on.

Full information can be found in the online README and documentation:
  https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ianmdlvl/otter/docs/README.html
  https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ianmdlvl/otter/docs/

Otter can be obtained via git:
  https://salsa.debian.org/iwj/otter
For the release, there is a PGP signed tag there, `otter-0.6.0`.

When I made the first public release, I blogged about it here:
  https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/8121.html
  https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/tag/otter



Version 0.7.0 - 2021-06-08
==========================

New features
------------

 * Game spec files can now be processed with Tera for templating.

 * ssh-based access for `otter` cli, including appropriately-
   restricted access via authorized_keys in the server role account,
   and a mechanism for self-service public key management.

 * `otter` cli can now read a preferences file
   (`~/.config/otter/prefs.toml` by default) to allow pre-configuring
   commonly-required command line options like `--game` and `--ssh`.
   See `otter --help` for documentation.

 * Mao and Penultima slightly updated (and, those game specs now
   use the new templating feature).

Bugfixes
--------

 * UI: When multiple pieces are selected and are to be raised (whether
   by explicit request, or because of drag distance), their relative
   ordering is preserved.  So dragging a group of pieces no longer
   scrambles their z order.

 * UI: When the SSE connection auto-reconnects, do not declare it an
   error and suggest to the user that reloading might help.  Instead,
   simply hope that it is going to be OK (since it generally is).  If
   the SSE connection declares failure (state 2), report a scarier
   message.

 * Docs: Fixes to some documentation errors (including a fix
   contributed by Simon Tatham).

 * CLI etc.: Improve a number of error messages; in particular,
   replace several "debug prints" of error messages with proper
   formatting, and print a better program kname.

 * CLI: Much better handling of stdout write errors.

Installation and deployment changes
-----------------------------------

 * The `otter` command line utility is now in its own Rust package
   `otter-cli`.

 * Better logging by server of events on command connections.

Internal and development changes
--------------------------------

 * make-release now polls crates.io's github view to work around
   cargo/crates.io bug https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/9507
   and has a release checklist in it.

 * Some internal renamings for clarity, especially regarding
   Authorisation proof tokens.

 * Reworked the types involved in management command channels, to
   use a different stacking of read/write adapters.  In particular,
   a new `childio` facility for handling conversations with a child
   process (in support of using `ssh` as a command conn transport).

 * `otter` cli no longer uses println!.  Instead we have a special
   wrapper for stdout which handles the errors and buffering for us.

 * `otter` cli subcommand dispatch made nicer and the program's code
   broken out into multiple files.

 * Internal apitest case code restructured somewhat.


-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson at chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.  

Pronouns: they/he.  If I emailed you from @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk,
that is a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.