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: Re: development goals Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:27:09 +0200 Message-ID: <87y723q6f6.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87hc90u9lb.fsf@gnu.org> <49dd78620809061545h1a1aa8e4t8e4c10772ab5b137@mail.gmail.com> <49dd78620809071303r148f2aedq6f5b9f3cd4bef3d2@mail.gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1220869665 12931 80.91.229.12 (8 Sep 2008 10:27:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 10:27:45 +0000 (UTC) To: guile-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Sep 08 12:28:40 2008 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 1Kcdz2-0007Qr-5V for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:28:36 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:57901 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Kcdy1-0007wV-Jv for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:27:33 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Kcdxw-0007rf-61 for guile-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:27:28 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Kcdxr-0007ls-Um for guile-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:27:27 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=39833 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Kcdxr-0007lT-Cj for guile-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:27:23 -0400 Original-Received: from main.gmane.org ([80.91.229.2]:38564 helo=ciao.gmane.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Kcdxq-0003jG-Hj for guile-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:27:23 -0400 Original-Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1Kcdxk-0006jK-IJ for guile-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:27:16 +0000 Original-Received: from 193.50.110.95 ([193.50.110.95]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:27:16 +0000 Original-Received: from ludo by 193.50.110.95 with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:27:16 +0000 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 64 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 193.50.110.95 X-URL: http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/ X-Revolutionary-Date: 23 Fructidor an 216 de la =?iso-8859-1?Q?R=E9volutio?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?n?= 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: i686-pc-linux-gnu User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.2 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:BmawpQ5pw6upOqWrbrEXmmF3Rw0= X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) 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:7624 Archived-At: Hey! "Neil Jerram" writes: > For me, almost all of my time since becoming a maintainer has been > absorbed by working on bug fixes, largely to do with slightly odd > platforms (e.g. Mac) or architectures (e.g. ia64). IMO it was > worthwhile to focus on such bug reports soon after they were reported, > because (i) the reporters are still around and interested enough to be > able to provide more info and test fixes, (ii) I believe that running > on more platforms will be good for the Guile community, and for Guile > applications. Same here. But everyone is welcome to help fix bugs! :-) > Basically, my feeling is that Guile users have been badly burned by > major release incompatibilities in the past, and I really don't want > that to happen again. Therefore my "straw man" plan is that > > - we stay on 1.8.x for a while Which IMO means fixing portability bugs and the likes. > - we treat "master" as a pot of goodies, which we aim incrementally to > merge across and release as part of the 1.8.x series The problem is that some of them might be subtly incompatible, mostly because a lot of internals have been exposed and actually used. I think it's good to have API and possibly ABI-compatibility within a major release, so that "1.8.x" really means something, for any value of `x'; requiring "x >= something" is acceptable IMO (we already have this, e.g., with modules that got added in 1.8), but "a <= x <= b" isn't. > - we don't do a big jump to 1.10.x, by just deciding to do so at some > time (+ a bit of pretesting), because I don't feel confident that we > can properly consider and document all of the 1.8 .. 1.10 > compatibility issues at once. I agree that we should reduce the gap between any two major releases. > But #1 : as I said above, I'm pretty sure Ludovic disagrees with this! It's not all black & white. ;-) > I believe that programmers' natural tendency is to plan for infinite > compatibility. +1. (That is especially true in Guile land where many projects are small and developed only on people's spare time, whom you can't expect to dedicate time switching APIs.) > There you're right. We can and should rip GH out now. Actually that > might make an excellent first example for documenting incompatibility. > (Anyone who really still needs it can take on the burden of > maintaining the GH layer themselves.) IMO, if it doesn't cost anything to keep it (beside `.so' size), let's keep it. Thanks, Ludo'.