jamal wrote: > On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 17:40 +0200, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote: >> There is an __attribute__((deprecated)) in gcc that displays a message >> during compilation time to warn that the software is using obsolete >> interfaces. Then, we can remove it 1 or 2 years later. > > Also something runtime maybe on syslog (example what packet socket > used to do - complaining about tcpdump until they changed it). > I did forget to mention one thing which may sound extreme, > Documentation: > A document aptly named "ABI breakage" which outlines all revisions and > what they break. Maybe even an extra document called > "Deprecation" which announces what is going to break and when. That seems fine, although I'm not sure that users usually look at these sort of files. I think that they wait until things break so they have to put out the fire :). >> In my case, it's been four years with the current library APIs and >> following an evolution approach as you have mentioned (adding new >> functions and obsoleting old ones but keeping them in the tree for a >> while). Now I'm doing more like a full re-design that needs the >> "revolution", no way to keep backward compatibility to resolve several >> issues. > > I think there is room for revolutions with the caveat of ample warnings. > Like you said if you have been giving warning for 2 years about > something deprecating then you are absolved of dropping the interface. > >> Still, people would be able to have both version 1 and 2 of the >> libraries installed in their computer so they can keep attached to old >> versions without breaking binary backward compatibility. I've been >> discussing this with a friend of mine that maintains a couple of >> critical libraries in the gnome project, it was nice to expose him my >> ideas and see that I was on the right track. > > Good motivation to migrate from version 1 to 2 is always a key > factor. Give me some compelling reason to migrate. At the risk of > sounding politically incorrect: Example, IPV4 works just fine; add > NAT and you address the major sticking point and i dont care about > the fact that IPV6 has the insurance that i can slice bread with it > someday when i need to. OTOH, pay me some $$ per packet > (a .01 Canadian penny would do) and i will migrate to IPV6;-> Well, shiny new features is the only thing that I can "sell" in this case. Something like: "if you migrate from version 1 to 2, you will get these set of new features in return". Of course, if they don't need them, it's a hard sell ;). -- "Los honestos son inadaptados sociales" -- Les Luthiers -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netfilter-devel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
