From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?iso-8859-1?Q?Court=E8s?=) Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Parallel installability, API stability Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:45:45 +0200 Message-ID: <87my3kelvq.fsf_-_@gnu.org> References: <871vl090k6.fsf@gnu.org> <87y6n6mpw1.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1256145184 2456 80.91.229.12 (21 Oct 2009 17:13:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:13:04 +0000 (UTC) To: guile-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Oct 21 19:12:53 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1N0ek0-0003HK-N8 for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:12:52 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:39382 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1N0ejz-0004Gw-Nt for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:12:51 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1N0eQf-0007Cl-In for guile-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:52:53 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1N0eQa-00075O-Hv for guile-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:52:53 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=44487 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1N0eQa-00075A-BY for guile-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:52:48 -0400 Original-Received: from lo.gmane.org ([80.91.229.12]:42504) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1N0eKK-0005Rd-GP for guile-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:46:20 -0400 Original-Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.50) id 1N0eKG-0006AI-Jo for guile-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:46:16 +0200 Original-Received: from laptop-147-210-128-170.labri.fr ([147.210.128.170]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:46:16 +0200 Original-Received: from ludo by laptop-147-210-128-170.labri.fr with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:46:16 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 50 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: laptop-147-210-128-170.labri.fr X-URL: http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/ X-Revolutionary-Date: 30 =?iso-8859-1?Q?Vend=E9miaire?= an 218 de la =?iso-8859-1?Q?R=E9volution?= X-PGP-Key-ID: 0xEA52ECF4 X-PGP-Key: http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/ludovic.asc X-PGP-Fingerprint: 821D 815D 902A 7EAB 5CEE D120 7FBA 3D4F EB1F 5364 X-OS: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:4T6LR6ujUh3BJfKhPosUJlUL2Bc= X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:9546 Archived-At: Hi again! Andy Wingo writes: > On Tue 20 Oct 2009 10:27, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes: [...] >> I think we must pay close attention to backwards compatibility, at least >> to honor long time promises >> (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2003-02/msg00074.html). [...] > For that reason we also think that Guile should be parallel-installable, > at least on the library level. That means that we should have the > version in the library name, and the version in the include path; so > pkg-config --cflags guile-2.0 will say e.g. -I/usr/include/guile-2.0, > and that pkg-config --libs guile-2.0 will be e.g. -lguile-2-0, or > something. Agreed. [...] > Sure, we need to make well-thought-out changes -- but our current > policy of very extended C-level compatibility is very, very limiting, > and a big energy drain. If we think we need to change a function > interface, well, we just change it, and document the change as well -- > perhaps even with a Coccinelle[0] patch. I’d probably be more conservative than you on API changes. For instance, I think ‘scm_search_path()’ and ‘scm_primitive_load()’ should be the same in 1.8 and 2.0 (at least at the C level, because in Scheme it’s easy to retain compatibility with optional args.) Guile is a niche, and so is Scheme. Among those who develop applications using Guile, I bet the vast majority does it on their free time. Free time is scarce and better spent writing application code than upgrading to the latest APIs. Thus, I think Guile core should evolve hands in hands with its users, making, indeed, only well-thought-out API changes. Actually, all GNU libraries I can think of, as well as Emacs, follow this scheme. I don’t think this is pure coincidence. GTK+, Python, etc. can afford disruptive changes, but their “ecosystem” is much different. Thanks, Ludo’.