Re: g_string_append_printf

[Sven Neumann <sven gimp org>]

Hi,

Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> writes:

> I'm not sure how you expect to keep the GIMP tree compileable against
> CVS and the latest release until we freeze the API. Trying to
> conditionalize is just a bad idea. Pick one or the other, and stick
> with it. 

we started to do it like this when 1.3.7 was released since the API 
does not seem to change that much since then. Until now it has worked 
reasonably well and only very little places needed conditionalized
code. I'd like to continue this practice since it makes it much easier
for the gimp developers that don't want to recompile gtk+ and friends
each and every day.

> If nothing else, trying to conditionalize will end up with lots of
> #ifdef cruft, but it also increases the work you have to do and is not
> going to be very hard to be reliable.

the #ifdef cruft will be removed as soon as the next release is made
so it's unlikely that it piles up.

> The versioning of intermediate CVS versions is always somewhat
> problematical. Unless we upped the version on every single
> interface change, it's never going to "make sense".

with our concept there's always only two possible versions to consider, 
latest release and current CVS. We will not support any intermediate 
states.

> Tim likes to change the version immediately after release. 
> I generally prefer to change it just before release, because:
> 
>  - We make more additions than backwards incompatible changes
>    so a CVS release between 1.3.9 and 1.3.10 is "more compatible"
>    with 1.3.9 than with 1.3.10.
>  - I'll remember to do it then reliably.
> 
> But essentially, versioning of CVS versions is inherently going
> to be nonsensical and there is nothing muc we can do about it.

I'd be happy if you would consider changing the version immidiately
after the release. If Tim would do this for glib only, that should
be enough. Of course I'm not demanding anything here. If there's 
really nothing you can do about it, we will drop the concept of
supporting released and CVS versions in the gimp development tree. 


Salut, Sven