On 29/11/2007, Danek Duvall <danek.duvall at sun.com> wrote: > On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 05:34:04PM -0600, Shawn Walker wrote: > > [quote] > > 8. Qt breaks binary compatibility from version to version. Will such a > > user-level inconvenience continue to be the case in the future and > > what can it be done to avoid it? > > > > Harri Porten: Binary compatibility has only been broken two times in > > Qt's history. Namely when switching to major version 2 and 3, > > respectively. In between those shifts - the last one happened more > > than two years ago - we have invested major efforts to keep > > compatibility between minor releases. This mostly involves a robust > > class design and educating every developer about the technical rules > > to obey > > [/quote] > > http://www.osnews.com/story.php/259/Interview-with-TrollTechs-Harri-Porten/ > > And this goes even further in that direction, implying that no > compatibility was broken when moving to 4.x. > > If both of those are the case, then the only reason I can see to ever want > old versions is when someone wants specifically to compile against it as > their "minimally supported version". Which suggests that stuffing > development copies (.so links, headers, etc) of QT somewhere somewhat > inaccessible makes sense, and keeping the latest and greatest up in > /usr/lib (and the like) is also a tenable solution.
That interview is from 2001, so it doesn't cover the fact that they broke it again during QT3 -> QT4. I should have noted that fact :( -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "We don't have enough parallel universes to allow all uses of all junction types--in the absence of quantum computing the combinatorics are not in our favor..." --Larry Wall
