Hey, I won't be able to make the phone conference, but I just wanted to volunteer my time in possibly helping out with system automation for compiling/testing on whatever the supported platforms are using buildbot or any other application the group picks.
Thanks, Salomon On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Martin Logan <[email protected]> wrote: > It is nice to be back. We have a lot of work to do as a project. After 2+ > years with minimal support we have our work cut out for us to get to where > we want to go. This has already started. Edwin, I hope you will help us go > over the project standards we are drafting as rules for ourselves which will > in the end prevent this sort of mistake from happening again. We are > touching on areas as: > Coding Standards > Testing Standards > Officially supported platforms > Versioning and Deprecation > Cheers, > Martin > > > On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 3:43 PM, Edwin <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Owners of a code base are entitled to decide exactly how to update an >> API. It's their code, after all. >> >> However, search engine results are packed with too many real-world >> examples of, and rationales for, maintaining backward compatibility at >> the API level to justify arguing about it here. >> >> When code is free, as in beer, the only real recourse to a serious >> disagreement about the software development policies of the code >> owners is to exercise one's freedom of choice and stop using it. >> >> On Oct 27, 1:36 pm, Samuel <[email protected]> wrote: >> > > I can agree with you on ktuo, we should have deprecated it at least >> > > across one major version change. I am currently putting together some >> > > erlware standards for our consideration. I will certainly add the >> > > deprecation approach to them. >> > >> > Just a couple of things here. >> > >> > 1 - It's true, the deprecation procedure it's not clear; "major >> > version change" may mean different things for all of us. For me, >> > 0.5.0.0 looks like quite major because the two trailing zeros, but >> > also somewhat minor because of the leasing zero. So, yes it is not >> > clear what's major >> > >> > 2 - Since it's not clear, it cannot be assumed anything in either >> > ways, so I disagree with the statement "When you deprecate an API, you >> > do NOT make it throw >> > an exception and break everyone's code that uses that API," That >> > depends on how the team wants to handle backwards compatibility. In >> > this case we (I suggested it) decided not to waste efforts maintaining >> > an api that was wrong. We could also decide to invest efforts in doing >> > so, at the cost of not doing other stuff, yes, but we didn't >> > consciously. And that was discussed in the list if I'm not mistaken. >> > >> > So the problem here is that Edwin assumed that backwards compatibility >> > was guaranteed, and it was not. In my view, this is a versioning issue >> > and a communication problem, but I don't see anything wrong in the way >> > ktuo moved forward. >> > >> > Maybe Edwin had to upgrade ktuo for some reason, maybe it was upgraded >> > by mistake by the tools (that would also be wrong). The thing is, if >> > you need to upgrade for some reason to latest ktuo version, and you >> > need it to be compliant with your code, and you are not willing to >> > change your code, then someone could put effort in porting the old >> > ktuo api to the new version. There are a lot of 'ifs' and a 'could' in >> > that sentence. If they are not met, dragging old, broken behaviour is >> > just a plain waste of time. I suspect that Edwin didn't need to >> > upgrade ktuo at all, so restoring an old version, as you are already >> > discussing, should close the issue. >> > >> > Regards >> > -- >> > Samuel >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "erlware-dev" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected]. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/erlware-dev?hl=en. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "erlware-dev" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/erlware-dev?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "erlware-dev" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/erlware-dev?hl=en.
