KDE ABI stability?

[Kevin Krammer]

On Sunday 04 December 2005 18:36, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> Kevin Krammer wrote:
> >> This means a program that compiled and ran with KDE 3.0.0 must still
> >> compile and run with 3.5.0 (including running without re-compiling).
> >
> >Unfortunately this seems only be true for kdelibs. I remember a thread
> > on debian-qt-kde (Debian KDE packagers list) about one of the other
> > modules breaking BC in a library shared with another module.
>
> All *public* libraries are supposed to maintain BC. Non-public ones and
> non-library code doesn't have to maintain.

Sounds reasonable.

> I am not sure whether libcvsservice was supposed to be public or not, but
> it does have public headers. This looks like a bug from the cervisia
> developers.

Unfortunately nobody seemed to know about it. Both me and Ian Geiser (thread 
starter IIRC) insisted on the very thread that KDE was supposed to be binary 
stable within a major release but we were told that this wasn't the case.

Even more unfortunately this had a bad impact on KDE's credability, i.e. "our" 
Debian packagers stay on the safe side and force removal of applications 
linking to an older KDE version than the one being installed.

E.g. removing all 3.4 apps when 3.5 is installed as part of an upgrade, which 
results in all KDE .org applications to be updated as well (not so bad) but 
all third party packaged applications removed (not very nice)

Assuming that the bug was indeed a BIC change in libcvsservice, it could 
indicate that non-core developers are not aware of the binary compatability 
requirement or uncertain when a library has to be considered public.

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer <kevin.krammer at gmx.at>
Qt/KDE Developer, Debian User
Moderator: www.mrunix.de (German), www.qtforum.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-core-devel/attachments/20051204/f41762b5/attachment.sig>