Re: [Cfengine-develop] Re: Homework

[Mark Burgess]

On  6 Mar, Andrews, Martin wrote:
> Andrew,
> 
> I am not convinced that we must throw out backward compatibility for
> syntax
> - sure some ugly parts should be deprecated at least. I think we
> should strive to maintain compatibility until we absolutely have to.
> For example, the network protocol incompatibility between 1.x and 2.x
> seemed gratuitous - the 2.0 cfservd should have been able to talk to
> 1.x machines too (I am not casting aspersions here - I understand that
> this would have required more work and I didn't volunteer to do it).
> This incompatibility has slowed my adoption of cfengine 2.x - I am
> only starting to roll it out now.


It was partly deliberate - there is also a compatibility option
for upgrading, but for security reasons and efficiency reasons
it was decided that compatability would be sacrified.

 
> It it turns out that we can get some wonderful new features only via
> incompatible syntax changes - so be it. I find that software
> developers are too quick to dump compatibility.

It should be a goal as far as is reasonably possible.


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