From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: ron minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] acme, rio workalike available in plan 9 ports
In-Reply-To: <3069.199.98.17.55.1082737250.squirrel@wish>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0404231100390.19442-100000@maxroach.lanl.gov>
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Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 11:03:12 -0600
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 6b879b0a-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Joel Salomon wrote:

> Is it a broken interface or implementation that's getting fixed? What I'm
> understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that so long as the
> function definition is compatible (the same?) the interface stays the
> same.

Well I'm now convinced that this is all very confusing. 

> If it's an interface that's being changed, your program needs a source
> code update to use the new function, and versioning can keep the old
> interface available. (And fix the spelling, too...)

I was really responding to the point made by the SGI poster (sorry I
forgot your name) that you can retain old version functions in the library
in the case that you can't update binaries. This strikes me as a problem,
since people will think "new library! problem fixed!" and not realize that
in fact for some subset of the binaries the problem remains -- since the
new library provides the old broken function in some cases.

Anyway, the thread has worn me out so I'm done :-)

ron