RE: A GNOME Bindings release set?

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

So, I'm still fairly confident that I can get some of you to agree to the
no-non-gnome-platform-bindings-in-bindings-of-gnome-platform rule.

But it's this bit below that worries me most. Which of you are likely to
have your
GTK+ 2.4 bindings ready and API frozen by March 22nd 2003 and no later? It's
not much extra work, but it is work.

I wrote:
> *** API freeze:
> 
> You freeze your API/ABI on the scheduled freeze date. This 
> will probably be around the same time as a final GNOME 
> release - for instance March 8th 2003, for GNOME 2.6.0: 
> http://www.gnome.org/start/2.5/
> 
> We will probably have an API freeze date and an ABI freeze date.
> 
> 
> *** What does API/ABI Freeze mean?
> 
> Different languages have different concepts of API and some 
> have no concept of ABI. Here are some vague rules that we 
> should all be able to understand:
> 
> If an application uses 2.6.0, installing 2.6.1 will not 
> intentionally break that already-installed application. As 
> well as not breaking already-installed applications, by 
> changing ABI, you should not break applications builds by 
> changing API.
> 
> You may not add API in the 2.6 phase. You must wait until the 
> next schedule to add API. Although adding API does not break 
> API/ABI, it does create confusion. We want to tell people 
> something simple like "2.6.x has this API. Later versions of 
> 2.6.x just have imlementation bugfixes, without API change or 
> addition.". Remember, it's not a problem if you have to wait 
> to add API, because you only have to wait <6 months until the 
> next stable release.
> 
> You may break API/ABI in the next schedule (e.g. for GNOME 
> 2.8.0). If you break API/ABI, then your new vesions must be 
> parallel-installable with the older version. Again, the rule 
> is "Don't break already-installed applications."
> 
> 
> *** API version numbers:
> 
> During the unstable development phase (before the API/ABI 
> Freeze), you should use odd numbers for your tarballs 
> versions numbers, and for any installed libraries. For the 
> stable phase, you will use even numbers. _Try_ to use the 
> same major numbers that GNOME uses.
> 
> You do not need to release new versions just because GNOME 
> has a new version. It's up to you when you do bugfix releases 
> of your stable branches. But we might announce a new GNOME 
> Bindings release after a couple of months. This will just 
> have your latest stable releases, whatever they are. That's 
> what GNOME does for it's 2.x.1 and 2.x.2 releases.

Murray Cumming
www.murrayc.com
murrayc usa net