Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker wrote:
>
> From: Dr Stephen Henson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> drh> The problem here is what is right?
>
> Consistency can't be wrong in the long run, can it?
>
> drh> Its not that clear cut.
>
> True. That requiers a Decision on our part. If nothing else, a vote
> will do, I assume :-).
>
Yep. I don't really care which way it goes. I started using the iget,
rget stuff but that can easily be changed.
> drh> Doing either will break lots of existing code need major rewrites and
> drh> probably get several of us lynched :-)
>
> Well, there already lynching going on about the current
> inconsistencies, so all we really have to do is to choose what we
> prefer to get lynched for :-).
>
I think a lot of the problem is that its not only inconsistent but also
not documented. If you just do a quick lookup in the docs its much more
tolerable than if you have to examine the source.
> drh> So the alternative is to have a naming convention and just say
> drh> the old functions are retained for backwards compatibility. Any
> drh> future documentation might not even document the old functions to
> drh> encourage the use of the new versions.
>
> ... and at some points, the old functions will disappear (first called
> obsolete, and then some kind of survey on what obsoleted functinos are
> stil used, or something?)? I guess I can live with that.
>
Yes thats one option I can also live with. We can rename the function
that does the work and have a compatibility function that does nothing
but call the old one then when the time is right dump it...
> Still, at some point (I think that was last summer) someone said that
> before version 1, basically anything goes, it should be assumed that
> 1.0.0 may mean a completely different API (probably a bit of
> exageration in there :-)), and that's what I told the programmers I'm
> associated with...
>
I'd love a completely new API :-)
Just on a side note. Some of you may recall that in the early days of
OpenSSL just *one* function was changed X509_get_pubkey() and its
equivalents.
I then spent the next few days (not that's not an exaggeration) tracing
every single leak it caused and fixing it. Even now I've still a nagging
suspicion that I missed a few.
Admittedly that is a function that is very extensively used but it can
be used to gauge what would happen if you change a substantial
proportion of similar calls.
Steve.
--
Dr Stephen N. Henson. http://www.drh-consultancy.demon.co.uk/
Personal Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Senior crypto engineer, Celo Communications: http://www.celocom.com/
Core developer of the OpenSSL project: http://www.openssl.org/
Business Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP key: via homepage.
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