On Mon, 2009-04-06 at 21:32 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Morgan Storey">
> 
> > Uhh Darwin ports... it basically gives you apt-get for mac. I am not a fan
> > of macs but I am pretty sure it has been around for a while:
> > http://darwinports.com/
> 
> That's an add-on, not a core part of the operating system. Really, packaging
> doesn't count until the entire system is built with it (or you have a
> versioned, consistent API/ABI core that the packaging system can sit on).

I did not understand this before I started work on OpenOffice:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_binary_interface

There was a really good document on why a stable ABI for a library is
important and how to achieve it but I cannot find it right now.    For
example when you add a parameter to function X you create another
function Y with the original signature and give a sensible default to
the new parameter.  The authors name started with H from memory,
something sounded German.  Nuts!

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