On Tuesday, 12 January 2016 at 16:21:40 UTC, Atla Neves wrote:
In C/C++, a change to the headers causes a recompilation which
will fail if there are API changes. From any other language,
it'll compile, link, and fail at runtime (unless the symbols
change name). If you're lucky in an obvious way.
Atila
It's true that working directly with the upstream header file
will catch errors that are not caught at compile time in other
languages, but that's only an issue if you're not testing the
calls you're making to the API. A couple of simple examples where
replacing the old header with the new is not a good substitute
for testing in the presence of arbitrary changes:
1. There's a change in the return value from 0=success to
0=failure. Then your program every so often dies with a segfault
somewhere else, and it takes two days to track down the problem.
2. The function body stays the same but the signature changes
from int foo(int x, int y) to int foo(int y, int x). Suddenly
you're dividing by zero with previously working code.
