4.2: the binary compatible release

[Ryan P. Bitanga]

2008/10/19 Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org>:
> Hello =)
>
> the second thing we discussed at the meeting today was moving libplasma to
> kdelibs and guaranteeing binary compatibility starting with 4.2.
>
> here are our notes from the meeting:
>
> Binary Compatibility and kdelibs
>    * The Plan
>        * libplasma, in its entirety, in kdelibs for 4.2
>        * 2 weeks to go through the API and find things we should change
>        * at the end of the 2 weeks it's "speak now or forever hold your peace"
>        * if there are things that we feel are just Too Ugly(tm),
>          we move it out of the lib for 4.2
>    * Known issues
>        * Service additions
>        * Multiple action runners
Hey sorry I disappeared completely. I spent too much time previously
working on KDE and neglecting my thesis that it ended up biting me in
the ass. Anyway, I'll be free in a week. Do all changes have to be
merged into trunk in two weeks?

>        * PanelSvg name - apparently people don't like it ;)
>        * Tooltip API review
>
> this means that by October 31 we need to have all API complaints on the table
> and addressed.
>
> i fully admit that the API will never be perfect. we could polish it forever.
> this is true of pretty much any complex framework, but doubly so for something
> that is trying to do something that hasn't been done a thousand times before.
>
> for those wondering what binary compat means for us, in a nutshell:
>
> * we can add new classes
> * we can add new non-virtual methods to existing classes
> * we can deprecate existing classes
> * we can add new members to the dptrs
> * we can't remove existing methods or change their signatures
> * we can't add new members to the public classes (the dptr makes that
> unecessary in the first place, of course =)
> * we would be committed to this until KDE 5
>
> moving more and more developers towards the scripting languages will make this
> less of an issue, really; and app developers will be rather happy with us for
> making this move.
>
> --
> Aaron J. Seigo
> humru othro a kohnu se
> GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
>
> KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Software
>
>
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