docs: add history file

Prerelease/7.0.0b30

HISTORY.md

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+# History of the project
+This file collects notable milestones and events related to DZGUI, mainly around DZGUI as a framework and the history of development.
+A chronological summary of features can be found in CHANGELOG.md.
+
+## 2021
+### 2021-12-03: DayZ adds support for Battleye over Proton
+DayZ was among a handful of games with whitelisted anti-cheat support under Valve's emerging WINE-based Proton compatibility layer.
+While adding anti-cheat compatibility at a technical level, this change did not actually allow the client to connect to servers running complex modlists.
+
+Development of the precursor to DZGUI began at around this time.
+
+### 2021-12-12: initial version of DZTUI is created
+DZTUI, a Bash script and terminal user interface, was the precursor to DZGUI.
+This was an initial attempt at bootstrapping the Steam client to handle mods correctly when launching DayZ.
+Due to user interest, features continued to be added. This early tool is archived under the 'dztui' branch.
+
+## 2022
+### 2022-05-09: addition of zenity GUI and project name change (DZGUI)
+With the introduction of the Steam Deck, more users wanted a graphical user interface
+to interact with DZTUI. Being that DZTUI was purely a Bash script, a method of
+drawing menus was needed, so the 'zenity' package was used to create prefabricated dialogs.
+While this met the minimum requirement to show prompts and selectable options, no rich customization was possible.
+
+The introduction of zenity as a dependency marked the shift from "DZTUI" to "DZGUI".
+
+Throughout 2022, the limits of zenity for DZGUI's purposes were tested, particularly in the context of SteamOS.
+This led to the discovery of a number of bugs in zenity, GTK, and SteamOS, which were reported up to their respective channels.
+While this was improving the SteamOS user experience, it started to become clear that a fully custom UI was needed.
+
+This barebones version of DZGUI sufficed for some time, with the Bash script and some standalone Python modules doing the heavy lifting,
+and this period served to surface a number of bugs and interesting interactions with the Steam client.
+
+## 2023
+### 2023-11-23: Python 3.10 dependency
+Prior to this time, DZGUI open-endedly allowed you to use any Python version for its modules, without any significant handling for
+the idiosyncrasies of different versions. A minimum requirement of Python 3.10 was thus instituted to normalize expected behavior.
+
+Throughout 2023, various features related to server browsing were added, such as filters and more granular search parameters.
+
+There were still a lot of unknowns at this time, so things were being resolved through trial and error.
+
+## 2024
+### 2024-01-31: DZGUI 5 API introduces GTK UI
+Using zenity as a simple GUI had exposed some bugs and limitations in that package, particularly when trying to push huge lists of server records
+into tables and sorting them in a performant manner.
+
+Around this time it became clear that a more robust UI framework was needed. While keeping the original Bash script and Python modules for
+background processing, PyGObject (GTK) was added to the project in order to ship a custom UI that could be designed from the ground up.
+
+However, it should be noted that at this point, the DZGUI logic itself was still a (increasingly large) Bash script to which a GTK UI had been stitched on.
+These were totally separate components, with UI actions on the GTK side triggering calls to Bash functions in an overly complex helper file.
+The UI was basically a thin client around the old Bash logic, but this was still a far cry from an integrated application with proper signals and dedicated components.
+
+Effectively, DZGUI 5 through 6 were a stepping stone that set the groundwork to go from DZGUI 4 (pure Bash script) to
+DZGUI 7 (standalone Python application). Today, little of DZGUI 5's original logic remains outside of the basic UI grid.
+
+### 2024-10-15: Frostline DLC released, widespread parsing problems
+DayZ's first DLC introduced a new format for server responses that packed extra metadata into the A2S_RULES format.
+Upon its release, all third-party DayZ launchers and server listing web sites were unable to parse the mod information being returned from Frostline servers.
+
+For a period of two weeks, this remained unsolved and various attempts were made to understand the updated specification.
+
+### 2024-10-30: DZGUI hotfix adds support for Frostline servers
+DZGUI was the first third-party tool to fix parsing for Frostline servers and restore functionality.
+This was a small milestone, because it meant DZGUI was evolving from a "dumb" launcher to a featureful tool
+touching upon and improving all aspects of the end-to-end DayZ experience.
+
+Particularly around this time, the sheer diversity of needs of modders, server operators, and players started to become clear.
+Users had highly specific and diverse use cases for setting up their game environment, and requested a number of features to support that on
+the DZGUI side.
+
+## 2025
+### 2025-01-17: DZGUI 6 API
+With DZGUI 6, the difficult decision to enforce a Python 3.13 dependency was made.
+While the previous dependency was Python 3.10+, it was deemed better to develop against and target identical versions.
+
+However, due to the vagaries of managing Python environments on end-user systems, this change added unnecessary complexity and frustration.
+Users had to properly set up virtual environments, install the relevant dependencies, and create a wrapper script to run this version, whereas
+previous versions had essentially been point and click.
+
+### 2025-10-23: DZGUI 7 API and the "Ship of Theseus"
+It had become clear that the situation above was untenable and the legacy Bash script was unmaintainable given the project's enlarged scope.
+The lack of a robust testing or typehinting framework made it difficult to diagnose rare bugs.
+
+Shipping a standalone, turnkey application with zero or minimal dependencies was the most urgent priority.
+DZGUI was still carrying around small bits and pieces of the old Bash script logic, so the decision was made to
+refactor the application into a pure Python + GTK tool. This would effectively be a total rewrite of all logic,
+only preserving the most minimal skeleton of the original UI layout as a reference.
+
+Over the course of a year, a wholesale "Ship of Theseus" rewrite took place.
+Nearly every component of DZGUI 6, both API and UI side, was taken apart and replaced.
+
+A soft alpha and beta phase were used to iterate on this concept further. DZGUI 7 was increasingly recommended to users
+as the preferred choice. This allowed for keeping the established userbase on the (relatively) stable DZGUI 6 spec, while building up
+the new spec and making it available to more users as features were elaborated.
+
+Through late 2025, several LLM-generated applications that recycled significant parts of DZGUI's code without the applicable GPL license were found.
+The maintainers of those projects were advised to excise the offending segments or apply the necessary GPL licenses.
+
+## 2026
+### 2026-05-17: Switch to standalone releases
+The DZGUI 7 beta starts shipping standalone glibc builds with an integrated setup wizard and installer.
+
+# TODO: remarks on DZGUI 6 stable vs testing branch logic and "over the air" updates vs standalone builds
+# TODO: note archived branch names
+
+### 2026-10-27: 500 tickets closed
+The milestone of 500 tickets/PRs being closed was reached.
+
+2026 was by far DZGUI's most intensive year by commits, perhaps suggesting the scope of the rewrite:
+
+- 2021: 16
+- 2022: 434
+- 2023: 322
+- 2024: 347
+- 2025: 426
+- 2026: 1300
+
+DZGUI 7 is scheduled to release as a stable version within the year.