Re: Guidelines for stable branch changes in GLib/Gtk

[Morten Welinder <mortenw gnome org>]

> If I'm not mistaken, this was a different kind of breakage that
> we engage in a lot of lately: API-incompatible changes on the
> unstable branch.

Close, but not quite.  This was a case of "user updates gtk+ to new
stable 3.x and applications cease to work".  No API involved, it's all
a matter of ABI.

The normal mechanism to signal ABI changes is to admit it and change
soname.  However, that is so painful[*] that people get the urge to sneak
little changes in here and there.

Morten



[*] So painful that the g++ people backed out a change to std::list
required for standards compliance in order to avoid changing soname.