RE: 2.4 Module List - zenity

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> From: Jeff Waugh [mailto:jdub perkypants org] 
> Sent: Freitag, 25. April 2003 12:05
> To: Cumming Murray (COMNEON Linz)
> <quote who="Murray Cumming Comneon com">
> 
> > I don't have any solution for this. It worries me. I think the only
> > solution might be to keep the "API" very small and simple. 
> How small and
> > simple is the API now?
> 
> Murray, this is a really simple dialog launcher for shell 
> scripts, and the
> current command line options are far better than the old 
> gdialog ones.

If something automatically qualifies because we had something similar
before, then OK. If not then I don't see the harm in dicussing it properly.

> I don't really understand your objections, given that we can 
> comfortably
> assume that Glynn won't be randomly changing the command line 
> parameters for
> every release.

APIs change. I asked about API versioning, not just API stability. The
question was What happens for GNOME 3? It's not reasonable to expect
anything but the most simple command line options to remain unchanged
forever.

> Additionally, it has been proposed for the desktop release. 
> There are no API
> guarantees for modules in the desktop release,

This module exists purely to provide API, so that API should be considered.
gstreamer doesn't need API stability in the Desktop release because it is
only there as a side-effect of having the media apps that depend on it. If
any other language binding was being added to the Desktop release then we
would need to consider its API too.

> I don't think API compatibility is a primary concern for 
> zenity's inclusion.

It's not my most primary concern. It's a concern. It's OK to say that there
are no answers to my questions. It's OK to say that we just hope it works in
future because command-line arguments compatibility is a difficult problem.
It's not OK to say ignore the problem and don't ask.

Murray Cumming
murrayc usa net
www.murrayc.com