On 28 Sep 2008, at 12:15, mickey jones wrote: > Which version should I use, 1.3 or 2.0? From what I've gleaned from > the docs, both versions have essentially the features I'm looking > for (basic widgets, fast drawing, etc), and I don't really need any > of the features (i18n, cairo, etc) coming into either versions at > the moment. If anything, what I'm interested in is stability, both > in terms of no-crashes, but also in terms of development...
Technically, both 1.3 and 2.0 are the experimental branches. 1.1.9 is the current stable. The 1.1.x series has been around for a while, and is pretty robust. It will be around for a long time (there are a lot of people here with heavy code investments in the 1.1.x family...) but probably will not see much future development, only maintenance. 1.3 is intended to continue the stable branch, but introducing new features that the 1.1.x series couldn't absorb for architectural reasons. So, broadly 1.3.x will be (mostly) API compatible with 1.1.x, but *not* ABI compatible. The 2.x series embraces new architectural approaches and API, so is less directly compatible. The API is probably "more modern" and perhaps "cleaner" but of course those are words laden heavily with opinion... The 2.x tree has been exploring a variety of approaches for some years now, but there's no "stable" version as such. The 1.3 tree is new, forked as a direct successor to the 1.1.x series. The intent is to have stable 1.3.x releases following in the pattern of the stable 1.1.x releases. At present either 2.x or 1.3.x will work fine, but neither is at an "official" stable release - only 1.1.9 is "stable". > will either branch be dead in 5 years? Ah, but what constitutes dead for an open source project? As long as you have the source and it still builds, is it dead? Even if no one actively maintains it any more? I don't think so. As evidence, I offer the widely used jpeg6b. We all use it. It hasn't changed in years. Not because it is dead, but because it is stable. > (Sorry I don't know the exact history behind the version... but how > compatible is the 1.3 branch from the 2.0 branch? Is it just a > matter of changed/reorganized function names, or did something > change architecturally?) Yes, there are architectural differences and API differences. The underlying philosophy of the design is very similar, but the details of the implementation rather less so. 1.3 is pretty well compatible with 1.1.x, but differs sufficiently from the 2.x series as to require a fair bit of rework if porting from one to the other. _______________________________________________ fltk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.easysw.com/mailman/listinfo/fltk
