Re: [Nautilus-list] GnomeVFS 1.0.2 Release

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 19Sep2001 12:24AM (-0400), Iain wrote:
> 
> > Some people also don't like it when backwards-compatible API changes
> > are made within a stable series. We don't really have an official
> > policy on this and basically every module has done it.
> > 
> > The three changes here are strictly additions and the authentication
> > at least is a pretty important feature.
> 
> I thought the policy was that stable libraries had only bug fixes or
> "essential" api changes, that make things unusable. This policy being so
> that people could say "It works with GNOME 1.4" and it didn't matter
> what versions of libraries you had, so long as it was at least gnome 1.4

I don't think we currently have such a policy, although in we could
decide to if there was general agreement that this was good. Nearly
every library in the GNOME platform has had backward-compatible API
changes within a stable series though, so this is not really a
gnome-vfs-specific issue.

As I understand it, the only compat policy we have consensus on is not
to make source or binary incompatible changes within a stable series.

It's easy to say "It works with GNOME 1.4" if you use only features
found in baseline versions of the libraries.

Anyway, I think the gnome-vfs developers would be happy to follow a
more restrictive policy if it were generally agreed upon and other
modules followed it too (and no, putting `experimental' or `hack' in
the name of the function call doesn't make it magically not count :-).

Regards,

Maciej