Re: ABI Compatibility (was Re: Installation woes for the average user...)

[Yavor Doganov]

В Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:53:56 +0000, David Chisnall написа:
> It is very easy to have a stable ABI for a procedural API because
> there is no notion of subclassing.  Even with GObject this is not
> really a problem, as it doesn't really present an OO model.

Right you are.  Even then, after years of deprecating functions/entire
classes and adding new fancy stuff, the GTK+ developers are
considering to break the API/ABI with 3.0.  It is not unusual for a
large library to become unmaintainable at some point, accumulating
unthinkable amounts of cruft, and the need for refactoring can become
obvious.

>> It would be good enough to break the ABI *only* when necessary.
> 
> I'd agree with this.  At the very least, I'd hope that people would
> post a mail to gnustep-dev BEFORE breaking the ABI and not commit

I think you misunderstood.  As a GNUstep user and distro maintainer of
GNUstep packages, I don't mind if the GNUstep developers break the ABI
as much as they want (of course, the less the better).  But only bump
the soname of a library when there is breakage.  The current release
policy just doesn't make any sense (and never had for me personally).