Re: Guile's DATAROOTDIR and DATADIR

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>
>> Cc: guile-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2016 13:25:46 -0400
>> 
>> Having said this, I will admit that we've not maintained perfect ABI
>> compatibility within 2.0.x, e.g. we've removed some obscure interfaces
>> that were intended to be kept private, or were broken and could not be
>> easily fixed, and that we believed to be unused in practice.

Sorry, my statement above was in error.  It was based on a false claim
made by David Kastrup here:

  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/174438

He wrote that our NEWS file "lists plenty of things that have been
_removed_ during the stable-2.0 branch, breaking existing uses", but the
examples he cited were *deprecations*, not removals.  Existing uses
continue to work throughout the 2.0.x series.

I spent some time searching our NEWS file for examples of *actual* ABI
breakage in 2.0.x, and I didn't find anything.

>> In any case, to the extent that there's a problem here, the solution is
>> to redouble our efforts to avoid ABI breakage.  The solution is most
>> definitely *not* to have separate directories for every maintenance
>> release.  The reason is that we want existing Guile programs compiled
>> against 2.0.11 to benefit from the bug fixes in 2.0.12.
>> 
>> Does that make sense?
>
> It make sense if it indeed works in practice.

As I wrote in my previous message, it does indeed seem to work in
practice, based on the lack of bug reports indicating otherwise.  If you
have evidence to the contrary, please bring it to our attention.

> Is it possible to publish the list of ABI incompatibilities between
> 2.0.11 and 2.0.12 specifically?

I'm not aware of any.

     Mark