Activity Backward Compatibility (was re: Re: joyride 2128 smoketest)

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 6:39 PM, Bobby Powers <bobbypowers at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/12/08, Morgan Collett <morgan.collett at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 00:56, Greg Smith <gregsmitholpc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  > Hi Guys,
>>  >
>>  > We should definitely have backward compatibility for activities!
>>
>>
>> In my opinion, there should be compatibility from one release to the
>>  next. APIs should not break from release to release unless critically
>>  necessary. If there is a new way of doing things which is better, the
>>  old way should still work - but it should warn in the log files that a
>>  deprecated API is being used.
>
> Problems arise independently of API when libraries not part of the
> base system are used.  For example, I have an activity that uses
> goocanvas and the glibmm libaries, which I package in the activity
> bundle.  I tried first using glibmm from F9, but it didn't work on
> F7-based builds.  I then substituted glibmm from F7, and it works on
> 656, 703/8, and all the recent joyrides.
>
> I don't know the best way to handle this generally, I suppose it is up
> to individual activity owners to make sure their stuff works all over.

We can't do much for libraries whose upstream has no OLPC developers
involved (other than complaining when they break things). In general
though this kind of libraries has sensible API policies which activity
authors can rely on.

Marco