From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Jun 4 14:20:51 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from Awfulhak.org (gw.Awfulhak.org [217.204.245.18]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B931E37B401 for ; Tue, 4 Jun 2002 14:20:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hak.lan.Awfulhak.org (root@hak.lan.Awfulhak.org [IPv6:fec0::1:12]) by Awfulhak.org (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g54LKPKZ006564; Tue, 4 Jun 2002 22:20:25 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from brian@Awfulhak.org) Received: from hak.lan.Awfulhak.org (brian@localhost [IPv6:::1]) by hak.lan.Awfulhak.org (8.12.3/8.12.3) with SMTP id g54LKMAI034369; Tue, 4 Jun 2002 22:20:22 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from brian@Awfulhak.org) Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 22:20:22 +0100 From: Brian Somers To: Garance A Drosihn Cc: bakul@bitblocks.com, tlambert2@mindspring.com, will@csociety.org, kris@obsecurity.org, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Avoiding unnecessary breakage (was Re: Removing wait union) Message-Id: <20020604222022.6f935871.brian@Awfulhak.org> In-Reply-To: References: <200206041752.NAA08182@rodney.cnchost.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.7.5claws (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd5.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 4 Jun 2002 14:34:34 -0400, Garance A Drosihn wrote: > I hope this is not sounding too sarcastic, because I do agree > with the general idea that we should "avoid unnecessary breakage". > It is pretty easy to say that, but it is hard to actually do it, > while still moving the operating system forward. Many software vendors would say that a published interface can only be removed after two major releases of the software. The first major release should suggest that the interface is depricated and should no longer be used (the documentation should probably suggest the (new?) alternatives too). The following release can then remove the interface. While this is painful for the developer, it's necessary for any API provider in order to provide a *viable* platform for building upon. Personally, I think FreeBSD should adopt such a strategy. Whilst it would also be nice to have an Architecture group that could control this sort of thing, I don't think that's at all practical for FreeBSD. -- Brian Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour ! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message