[Announce] GPGME 0.4.0 released

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Tue, Dec 24, 2002 at 05:29:46PM +0100, Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo wrote:
> El día 24 dic 2002, Marcus Brinkmann escribía:
> > On Tue, Dec 24, 2002 at 12:52:28PM +0100, Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo wrote:
> > >  Is going to be then the whole 0.4.x branch for testing?
> > 
> > I think that we will probably handle it like the 0.3.x branch.  At some
> > time, the interfaces will be stable and we will work on 0.5.x.
> 
>   But will version 0.5.x change the API again?

If we knew how the API looked in the future, we would never have a reason to
release with a different API before ;) 

On GNU systems, I think we can use versioned symbols at some time and stay
backward compatible for long times, if not forever.  However, we are still
on the look out for the best API, and that depends on the input from
application programmers, too (to some extent).

However, the maintenance burden is high, and you usually only do this after
the interface has matured.

>   Yes, but perhaps you should start maturing it. When you reach an age,
>   you have to mature wether you want or not. If not, you can get in
>   trouble... or become Peter Pan ;)

Hehe :)  yeah, well, I don't plan to undo any of the latest achievements,
ie, the parts of the API that have been revised in 0.3 and 0.4 should be
quite ok already.

>   Yes, I know. But if you're going to use this way, I'll have to change
>   how GPGME is package in Debian, as currently only one version can be
>   supported (there is only one libgpgme-dev package)
>   But this also means going on supporting and fixing bugs in 0.3.x
>   branch, because if you don't force users to switch, they'll go on
>   using the old one unless they want some of the new functionality.

This is what we do for now.  At some point, a new version will become stable
and 0.3.x will be discontinued.
 
>   So think about this. Perhaps it worths introduce even more API changes now
>   in 0.4.x branch,

Certainly this is going to happen.  It already happened yesterday, actually. 

>   and later go on working in internals until version
>   1.0.0. From there, all 1.x versions will have the same API (or perhaps
>   the 1.0.x ones, if you don't plan to rewrite some internal part). And
>   you can start working on version 2.0 (or 1.2) which will change again
>   the API to introduce some improvements.

Sorry, but I don't see the difference from what we do now except that you
say 1.0 and 2.0 where I say 0.3 and 0.4.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    marcus at gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann at ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/