Re: Octave 3.0

[John W. Eaton]

On 22-Feb-2003, Paul Kienzle <address@hidden> wrote:

| * Define an oct-file API so that oct-files will work
| without recompilation throughout the 3.x series?

Provided that they stick to that API, I assume, with no guarantees if
they use any function from Octave's internals.

I think we can try for this, and it seems like a reasonable goal, but
it might cause some trouble.  What if instead we made the following
guarantee, for the version scheme major.minor.patch:

  * If the patch level changes, binary compatibility for .oct files is
    guaranteed.

  * If the minor version changes, you might have to recompile, but the
    interfaces won't change.

  * If the major version changes, then there may even be changes in
    the API at the source level, so you may need to fix your code just
    to recompile.

But until we have 3.0, we continue with the current method of (almost)
anything goes from one snapshot to the next.

jwe