Re: [Devel] Project steering

[Sven Neumann]

Hi,

"Turner David" <address@hidden> writes:

> Well, the reason we "changed" the API was precisely because several
> Linux distributions already used mutually exclusive ways to install
> the library header files, causing *great* havoc for ordinary users and
> library implementors who didn't know how to find the relevant files
> during a "configure".
> 
> That's why we introduced the "change", which was *fully* backwards
> compatible with the old one. We also announced that the #include
> scheme needed to change in client libraries and applications a
> **very** long time ago. We also repeatedly informed people asking
> on the mailing list about the "problem".
> 
> Most developers have changed their source to suit the new convention.
> It's only recently that we discontinued support for the old scheme
> to reveal the few remaining broken libs.

Well, a lot of code using freetype simply broke when support for the
old inclusion scheme was dropped. This could have been avoided by
adding appropriate compiler warnings to the headers files a long time
ago.  If you insist on using a non-standard inclusion scheme that's
fine, but you could have made it more obvious that the traditional and
well-established way of including library headers is not the right
thing to do when dealing with the freetype library. Especially since
it appeared to work just fine. A lot of developers never noticed that
they were doing anything wrong until, out of a sudden, it stopped to
work.

No need to comment on this, but perhaps keep it in mind for the next
time when such a change becomes necessary.


Sven