Javier: the plan looks great, and I am very grateful that you try so
hard to fix the base types ... But there is IMO still the same
unresolved issues, and that's a lot for an "imminent change".

You put all over the place "changing the type is not that hard". Have
you already changed to the new type ? How much changes did you need to
make in your code ? Have you tried building the vanilla (i.e.
unmodified) all-of-Rock with the new type in ?

From my perspective, changing a base type *is* hard. It has an effect
on day-to-day work for all people that have been using RBS. It breaks
backward compatibility. Having a Deprecated class is, as far as I can
see, close to useless as RBS is mainly an orogen interface type, and
one will not be able to connect a Deprecated port to a non-deprecated
port.

Mixing the two types will be impossible (since they have the same name
but different ABIs). So, that's all-or-nothing: either you change all
your code to use the new RBS, or you keep the old one. Mixing stable
and master will be unreliable at best. Lot of people will probably end
up using master (with the pain and suffering that entails).

Does someone have any experience for a wide-ranging change like this ?
How would we get to the point where we *do* have experience before we
push it to everyone ? How do we avoid just randomly pushing this
change to everyone, while many people won't have the time and energy
to migrate to a brand new RBS ?

There is zero documentation and zero experience for a wide-ranging
change like this, and I currently have the impression that the issue
of such a change are just brushed off with a "let's do it, it's going
to be fine". rock-convert exists, but is documented nowhere.

Now, if this "changing RBS is just fine"  is the consensus, I would
vote for just creating a new type. At least, we would not pretend that
we're providing a clean upgrade path, and won't upset those of us that
don't have the time to just migrate to a completely new type that just
happens to have kind-of the same API.

Finally, you guys seem to push so much towards changing the base
types. If that's so high in your agenda, it might be time to put the
effort to make the process butter-smooth by doing the necessary
toolchain work ?

Sylvain

On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 10:54 AM, Javier Hidalgo Carrió
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> RigidBodyState (RBS) is changing. There is a list of imminent actions (1
> - 10 bullets).
> Your comments and alternative solutions are very welcome. Write them here:
> https://github.com/rock-core/base-types/wiki/TranformWithUncertainty-in-base-types#list-of-imminent-actions
>
> Javier.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rock-users mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://www.dfki.de/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/rock-users
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