My understanding has always been: m_pd.h is public and generally
shouldn't change without some sort of compatibility coverage. Anything
other .h is private.
That's the theory. On the other hand, many functions/variables in
"g_all_guis.h", "s_stuff.h" and "m_imp.h" are marked as "EXTERN" (which
on Windows resolves to a DLL import/export!). If those functions are
really private, why are they EXTERN?
Another problem is that Pd by default exports all symbols, so people can
easily use functions that are not explicitely exported or even declared
in a header (by providing their own forward declaration).
It would help if we would only explicitly export functions/variables
that are meant to be used by externals or libpd clients and hide
everything else. (See
https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/issues/569). We can still have
different policies for different header files ("m_pd.h" is the stable
API and everything else is "use at your own risk").
As a side note: libpd actually depends on the private API because some
essential functions, like sys_pollgui() resp. sys_microsleep(), are not
part of "m_pd.h". I guess we should think which functions are necessary
for libpd, so we can stabilize them and move them to "m_pd.h".
Christof
On 21.08.2021 12:55, Dan Wilcox wrote:
My understanding has always been: m_pd.h is public and generally
shouldn't change without some sort of compatibility coverage. Anything
other .h is private. I wrote d_soundfile.h and s_net.h as private
headers, but they could be included in m_pd.h to make them public for
example. We could add commenting marking them as such.
On Aug 21, 2021, at 5:03 AM, [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
Well, I've never been able to articulate a clear and complete policy...
Roughly speaking, I'm maintaining source and binary compatibility
for anything
that uses the public API (m_pd.h) and trying not to break things
that use
private APIs (g_vanas.h, s_stuff.h and, privater still, m_imp.h").
 Meanwhile
there's a profusion of ".h" files I didn't write (d_soundfile.h,
g_all_guis.h,
etc) that I've never formed a policy for.
--------
Dan Wilcox
@danomatika <http://twitter.com/danomatika>
danomatika.com <http://danomatika.com>
robotcowboy.com <http://robotcowboy.com>
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