Re: Guile release planning

[Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com>]

Greets,

On Wed 12 Nov 2008 11:11, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> I think we went wrong in the 1.4->1.6 and 1.6->1.8 transitions, by
>> leaving /source files/ to bitrot. We should have provided
>> guile-1.6-compat.[ch] and guile-1.8-compat.[ch] files for users to
>> include in their source trees, wrapping e.g. the gh_* API, or SCM_INUM.
>> That way their code stays usable, ours stays maintainable, and whenever
>> they decide to port to the new API, they already know how -- it's in
>> their source tree.
>
> Hmm, we have `gh.c' and `deprecated.c', which are kind enough to (i)
> provide compatibility wrappers, and (ii) tell users how to upgrade to
> the new API.  What do you dislike about it?

Oh, I think they're great :) But for example, Clinton was complaining
earlier this week in IRC (#guile on freenode, for those that don't know)
about the removal of the gh API in 1.9. I think Bruno did too some
months back. Etc. It's totally reasonable to remove dead code like that
from Guile itself, but at every bump we should push those shims *out to
the user*, so they can have the compatibility shims in their source
code.

> Or maybe you're referring to things like `guile-compatibility.h' in
> G-Wrap? Basically, it allows G-Wrap to use the latest API and have it
> work with the older versions of Guile.

That is another nice option, for those in group (2) who actively follow
Guile development.

Cheers,

Andy
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