On 2010-08-23 09:44-0600 Orion Poplawski wrote: > I submitted plplot to linuxtesting.org. Results are here: > > http://linuxtesting.org/upstream-tracker/versions/plplot.html
Thanks, Orion, for arranging for these eye-opening tests to be made. Will they be done whenever we have an svn trunk change or a new release, or is this just a one-off? >From this report it seems that anybody who compiled an application or library against 5.8.0 is going to be in real trouble with later releases until they recompile. That's bad and completely incompatible with our goal of minimizing backwards-incompatible changes as much as possible. Some of these backwards incompatibilities are due simply to sloppiness on our part since many complaints use the following language: <quote> Member ??? has been added at the middle position of this structural type. Effect: Layout of structure members has been changed and therefore members at higher positions of the structure definition may be incorrectly accessed by applications. </quote> This common gratuitous issue appears in virtually all our releases since 5.8.0. I don't think there is anything we can do about it at this stage, but I am glad to see this gratuitous issue does not appears in svn trunk versus 5.9.6, and please keep it that way from now on (by adding new members at the end of the struct)! Other issues appear to be changes we really want such as the present two warnings in svn/trunk compared to 5.9.6. If others confirm we really want these changes and there is no way to do them without introducing backwards-incompatibilities, I have been told in the past that the proper course is to bump the major version in the affected library, and make a note about these changes in our release notes. But if we don't stop the trickle of backwards incompatibilities, I think that means we are going to have to bump the library version number for all our releases and again the user will be in trouble since no distro is going to keep all those old versions packaged. On such technical API issues, I will be the first to say I need lots of help and practical advice on how squeaky-clean we want to be with bumping the major version of each affected library so I hope others here that are more comfortable with API questions will also comment on the issues found in the above report. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sell apps to millions through the Intel(R) Atom(Tm) Developer Program Be part of this innovative community and reach millions of netbook users worldwide. Take advantage of special opportunities to increase revenue and speed time-to-market. Join now, and jumpstart your future. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-atom-d2d _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
