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

[Yavor Doganov]

В Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:00:19 -0600, Adam Fedor написа:

> We had a long discussion about this before

Yes, I remember it.

> that ended in the request that stable releases have no ABI or API
> changes (even additions), so that a developer and user could count
> on the same set of functionality in a release.

This is probably worth having in the (very) distant future, but has
little to do with the question at hand.  My objection was that it's
absolutely useless to bump the soname 1.14 -> 1.15 -> 1.16 (just an
example) when there are only compatible bugfixes and API
additions.  How you version the releases and what is considered
"stable" and "unstable" is completely orthogonal to the library
versioning.

In fact, Glib/GTK+ has a similar release version numbering and
development routine as GNUstep.  Odd versions are unstable, even
versions are stable, but they never break the ABI because they
promised so.  It shouldn't be very hard if GNUstep libraries break the 
ABI only when the developers actually do it, and not always with every 
major release.  Notice the difference from the "super-stability" that 
Helge was talking about in that old thread.