Re: Binary compatibility issues with Hugs FFI

[Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho]

On Thu, Aug 26, 1999 at 04:23:43AM -0600, Alastair Reid wrote:
> [I love these easy to answer requests.]

I'd love to see these things well documented.  I never saw this in any
docs I've read.  Actually I don't think I've seen the Hugs FFI documented
anywhere, but I may have missed some docs.

> The Hugs FFI already has a version number and it was indeed bumped the
> last time the binary interface changed.

Great.  More than half a problem solved, then.  The rest is coming up with
(or you telling me:-) a reasonable plan for the next transition period.

My problem as a Debian packager is that people might (actually most
likely: will) start packaging applications that use Hugs and its FFI.
I need to find some way to make sure that the dependency information
encodes the correct FFI version *and* people can .  I have several ideas
how to do this.  Actually, I think I can come up with a way on my own
now, thanks.

May I ask what version changed from 1 to 2?

> [Your message also talks about putting version numbers in directory
> names.

That was one possible idea.  Perl does it.  The idea is to allow people
to install extension modules for several versions of the FFI.  A common
agreement between distributors for this makes sure people can create a
precompiled tarball on, say, Debian and let a user extract it on, say,
a Red Hat system, if library versions etc allow it.

But it may be overkill for now.

-- 
%%% Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho % [EMAIL PROTECTED] % http://www.iki.fi/gaia/ %%%

   "... memory leaks are quite acceptable in many applications ..."
    (Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++, page 220)