Re: Revised GUI patch

[Adam Fedor]

On Oct 16, 2004, at 10:06 AM, Alexander Malmberg wrote:
> Seems OK in principle, but this breaks binary compatibility, so it'll 
> have to wait. I'll get back to you on this (soon, I hope).

My current idea for handling binary incompatibility is to allow them in 
the mainline, but when making a release based on a stable version (e.g. 
1.10.1, 1.10.2), I'll branch the stable release before the incompatible 
patch (or perhaps in some cases, it might be better to branch after and 
revert the patch in the branch). It seems complicated, but I think it's 
easier for developers to just not have to worry about binary 
incompatible patches and just have the "release manager" worry about 
them. Does that sound OK?

For example:

CVS Main Branch                 1.10 Branch
______________                  _____________
Base 1.10.0 release
|
|
\/
[...patches....]
|
|
---------------------------------------------> branch
|                                                       |
|                                                       |
\/                                                      \/
[... binary incompatible patch....]	[...merge in some later patches on 
mainline...]
|                                                       |
|                                                       \/
\/                                                      Base 1.10.1 Release
Base 1.11.0 Release


I'm still trying to work out if a change in behavior counts as binary 
incompatible - perhaps having that 'version discovery' patch in would 
help that.