Backward compatibility status

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello,

A number of Guile-using applications and libraries are tested against
the latest 1.9 release, using a recent stable release:

  http://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/nixpkgs/guile2test/with-status

As you can see, there’s a lot of red crosses, but you can help!  :-)

Here’s a summary of the reasons of these build failures:

| Name                                  | Cause                                           |
|---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------|
| autogen-5.9.8, beast-0.7.1 [1],       | GH                                              |
| drgeo-1.1.0, gnucash-2.2.9 [2],       | GH                                              |
| texmacs-1.0.7 [3] trackballs-1.1.4    | GH                                              |
| guile-cairo-1.4.0, guile-gnome-2.16.1 | depends on guile-lib                            |
| guile-lib-0.1.6                       | `define-macro-with-docs'                        |
| g-wrap-1.9.13                         | guile-lib, `scm_closure', `scm_add_method'      |
| lilypond-2.13.9                       | `scm_internal_hash_fold' & `scm_t_hash_fold_fn' |
| mailutils-2.1, dico-2.0 [4]           | `SCM_IM_*', `SCM_RESET_DEBUG_MODE', etc.        |
| mcron-1.0.4                           | invalid `configure' check                       |
| snd-9.4                               | `scm_i_procedure_arity'                         |

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=598490
[2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=598491
[3] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.editors.texmacs.devel/4006
[4] http://mail.gnu.org.ua/mailman/listarchive/bug-dico/2010-01/msg00000.html

Note how much GH is still used...

I think we should make the transition as smooth as we reasonably can.
To that end, you can take action in one of the following areas:

  1. See whether/how backward compatibility can be retained for each of
     these.

  2. Document how people are expected to transition away from the
     deprecated APIs, possibly provided Coccinelle semantic patches for
     C-level changes (see http://coccinelle.lip6.fr/).

  3. Contact application/library developers and help them transition
     to 2.0.

If you know of other apps/libraries worth testing, please let me know.

Thanks!

Ludo’.