Re: About compatibility in GNOME 2 (was Re: Compatibility stuff)

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

On 9 Mar 2001, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > Well, the problem I see here is when development goes on in the
> > stable branch and only a few people are using HEAD. Then it'll be a
> > huge pain to have a large number of changes.
> 
> But that situation is only going to last until the end of the month.
> Anyone who won't branch once 1.4 goes out deserves untold flameage  
> brought down from the heavens. Don't worry about it.
  
        Whilst initialy disagreeing with Martin, and loathing hacks like: 

                #define GTK_OBJECT_TYPE G_OBJECT_TYPE

        I think he is quite right that it can only be a good thing to
improve source compatibility between versions. It allows people to start
preparing applications for porting to Gtk+ 2.0 before Gtk+ 2.0 is fully
frozen. It also allows GNOME applications people actualy use [1] to move
towards Gtk+ 2.0 more quickly - which has to be good.

        I havn't seen exactly the full scope of what Martin proposes for
some reason, but it seems remarkably similar to the good job Daniel did   
with source compatibility between libxml1 and 2. I think Daneil's work    
there will have, and has had a very positive effect in preparing and
transitioning code to libxml2.

        I'd also be quite happy to have lots of mechanical seds removed   
from my diffs between a stable version I have to maintain and any other   
branch.
  
        Just an API user's view,
  
                Michael.

[1] - which will want to stick with the Gnome 1.4 libraries until Gnome
2.0 is near frozen,

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot