> What do you mean by "a contract"? Sounds like "a > commitment to support an > interface, in the way it is now, on an ongoing > basis".
I don't think it means that, but from what I've seen mentioned in previous discussions, it does mean making a reasonable effort to _notify_ those holding a contract before putting a change out that would affect them. That's arguably a useful concept, unless one _likes_ breakage, IMO. [...] > Aas far as "filing bugs" go... I dont have much > confidence that filing a bug > "there isnt enough documentation on this", is going > to go anywhere. Do you? > be honest now. if they are "too busy" to write it up > in the first place, I > dont think that some random person filing a bug, is > going to get much > traction either. [...] > well, gee.. if there are "cooperating projects, > sharing interfaces"... it > seems like the sane thing to do, would be to DOCUMENT > those interfaces, to a > level suitable for (semi)-project-external use, > wouldnt it? :-) That just > seems like good technical practice to me. > > However, by dint of your hypothetical situation about > two projects sharing > an interface... I think that also in and of itself, > should never be allowed > to be private, in the context of OpenSolaris. > In my opinion, it should be on the public source > tree, and documented as an > interface. Otherwise, you just removed the "open" > from "opensolaris". > > [if a developer is already share-minded enough to be > sharing with "another > project".. the incremental effort to share more > widely, should be relatively > small. [...] Every file format and non-static function call or external variable is _potentially_ an interface. If they were all documented to the level that someone not working closely on that particular bit of code could safely manipulate them, I suspect little other work would get done. That having been said, I'd like to see most of whatever documentation already exists for contracted or consolidation-private (i.e. multi-project) private interfaces made available, with some boilerplate disclaimers added if that will make happier those worried that someone might misconstrue that documentation as some indication of stability that it isn't. If the code is open, then whatever documentation already exists (not necessarily implying that more must be written) should ideally be released too. IMO the earlier point also holds that if there's no other way to do something than via a private interface, then there should be an RFE for a public interface to do the job. But I suspect getting a "contract" on some private interface needn't be incredibly difficult, and if there's very few potential consumers, may be cheaper or more flexible than promoting it to a public interface, and would certainly be more maintainable than just using it (documented or not) without some assurance of notification of future changes. This message posted from opensolaris.org
