Re: gnustep-base library versioning

[Larry Campbell]

On Jan 3, 2007, at 11:55 AM, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
> On 3 Jan 2007, at 15:25, Larry Campbell wrote:
>
> > gnustep-base specifies an INTERFACE_VERSION that includes its  
> > minor version number. This means that I have to relink everything  
> > whenever I deploy a new version of gnustep-base.
>
> Only if the new version increments the minor version ... ie has api  
> differences from the old version.
>
> > This is really rather impractical, and I wonder whether we  
> > couldn't change INSTALL_VERSION to include only the major version  
> > number (and, of course, make no backwards-incompatible changes  
> > during minor version upgrades).
>
> We do that with the subminor version number.
>
> > The current behavior, where every program needs to be relinked and  
> > redeployed whenever gnustep-base is updated, is a significant  
> > inhibitor to the adoption of gnustep where I work.
>
> You only need to relink where a release changes the interface  
> version ... that's relatively infrequent ... and you would  
> presumably only move to a new release with a different interface  
> version (rather than a bugfix release with the same interface  
> version) if/when you want to use new features it offers.

Yes, but if one component wants to use a new version and nineteen  
others don't care, the nineteen others still have to relink if  
they're to be deployed along with the one. It's the relinking of the  
nineteen others that's the killer.

- lc