On Mon, 2006-05-29 at 16:51 +0200, Udo Richter wrote: > I think the main advantage of APIVERSION is not for selfmade VDR, but > for binary distributions. Distributions usually have a fixed small set > of patches and can avoid lots of new packages if APIVERSION didn't change. Exactly. And note that in addition to building lots of packages (maintainer modifies X plugin packages, and builds them for Y architectures, Z distro versions), users need to download them, and every package upgrade is a potential problem/extra work spot for end users regarding config files (although if the packages are well made, this is not a big problem). APIVERSION helps reducing work for maintainers and end users, and avoids unnecessary downloads.
