Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:36:40 -0500 From: Yuval Levy <freebsd-current@sfina.com> To: Andre Oppermann <andre@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: RE: FreeBSD 6.0 and onwards Message-ID: <JDEKJNLCGHFCNEBPGLHBMENHFDAA.freebsd-current@sfina.com> In-Reply-To: <418FA238.80605@freebsd.org>
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Andre Oppermann wrote: > This doesn't work. You can't change API/ABI incrementally without breaking > applications. I am no OS expert and there are probably such situation in wich incrementally changing the API without breaking applications is not feasible or too hard to think of. Here a simple example where it works: A currency converter function is part of a web based application plattform: converted_amount = conversion (original_amount, original_currency, converted_currency). Then we realized we might also need to format the conversion for display. Introduce a fourth argument, a bolean (format/non-format). The new function was converted_amount = conversion (original_amount, original_currency, converted_currency, format). By testing if the fourth argument exists and defaulting to the original behaviour if it does not we upgraded without breaking the applications. Granted, this is a very simple example, far from the complexity of an operating system. It only shows that "this doesn't always work, but sometimes it could". Yuval Levyhome | help
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