-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Colin Watson wrote on 03/03/13 18:28: > > On Sun, Mar 03, 2013 at 10:48:21AM -0500, Michael Hall wrote: >> >> I agree, it was one thing when we would keep the same version of >> a library for 6 months at a time, but with a rolling release you >> could have one library or another being upgraded to a new major >> version every week. So unless those upstreams committed to >> backwards-compatibility, all of the work for providing that would >> fall to us. > > Let's be clear about our thinking on this or we won't get anywhere. > The problem is not libraries being upgraded to a new major version. > The problem is the older version no longer being provided. > > ...
This is getting a bit far from my area of expertise, but as I understand it, only one of the three examples I cited originally could have been solved by providing two library versions alongside each other. Here are the references: Matthew Paul Thomas wrote on 28/02/13 20:14: > ... > > During the Ubuntu 12.10 development cycle, the messaging menu API > changed for architectural reasons. Every application using it > broke, but that wasn't so bad -- because end users weren't using > it, OS developers expect things to break, and most of those > applications were fixed before the 12.10 release. "FFE: libmessaging-menu transitions for quantal" <http://launchpad.net/bugs/1040259> An example of a third-party app failing to cope: "Needs updating on Ubuntu 12.10 : change in libmessaging-menu api" <http://trac-plugins.gajim.org/ticket/14> > But if that change had happened during a rolling release used by > end users, either end users would have experienced the breakage, > or we would have had to pay the cost of reimplementing the old API > alongside the new one. That would be a cost our competitors do not > pay -- or pay only because they benefit from vastly more and older > third-party applications than we do. > > That is not an isolated case. There have been similar API changes > for application indicator menus, This one was, and is, addressed by shipping multiple libraries. <http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=libappindicator1> <http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=libappindicator3> (Though I'm told that if you're new to Ubuntu development and you "from gi.repository import AppIndicator", you get the wrong one. Yay.) > for Unity lenses and scopes, January 2012: "Now, as some have picked up, the Unity Lenses API has changed slightly in Unity-5.0 (the version that'll be in Ubuntu 12.04). First of all; sorry!" <http://www.grillbar.org/wordpress/?p=585> > and probably for subsystems I've never even heard of. With an > end-user rolling release, if you installed OS updates overnight, > an application you had paid money for could stop working while you > slept. > > ... - -- mpt -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with undefined - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlEzxEoACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecosKwCeK705CUB9dy3MAU39EW+AaNT3 OpYAnRqmEVoXDwcPRKYvzANDRTKfcyno =r6LZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ubuntu-devel mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
