[Gtk-sharp-list] API Freeze Policy Adjustment

[Murray Cumming]

On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 17:41 -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> And I have never heard of a good argument against adding APIs.  You
> keep trying, but other than `thats what we do around here' you have not
> articulated why this is good.

I will try to expand my previous reasons for you:

I think the reasons are:
1.1 It avoids confusion by having too many versions of the API.

Developers don't have to ask think too hard about what version of the
API they are targetting, because there are usually just 2 widely-
deployed, clearly-defined APIs. This is mostly a matter of making life
simpler for developers and distributors, but I think that's a very good
reason, particularly when the time to wait for a new stable release with
your new API is rarely more than 4 months. 

1.2 It allows new API to be tested properly in unstable releases,
instead of suddenly appearing in a minor stable release.

You need to make unstable releases to test large new API. APIs are not
born perfect, and people don't test them enough when they are just
sitting in CVS. In fact, the need to have them tested in CVS can make
you too scared to release a tarball to provide other unrelated
improvements. This unstable/stable release schedule is a major reason
for GNOME's quality success since GNOME 2.0, compared to the chaos and
awful APIs of before that. That's not a controversial opinion.

> You keep trying, but you keep not articulating your reasons.

Let me make it clear again. These are not my policies. These's are
GNOME's policies. The release team just tries to represent the consensus
and provide a framework in which they want to work. However, I
personally happen to think that the GNOME community has got things
right.

If you disagree with the current API/ABI guidelines and/or the GNOME
time-based release process then please talk to the GNOME community about
it. Before doing that, I encourage you to read our notes about the GNOME
release process:
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/

And I'll make it clear once again: You can do whatever you like with
Gtk# 1.0 as long as it's not in an official GNOME release set.

But I would like to see mono bindings, and other bindings, being taken
as seriously as the GNOME Platform's C APIs. Only then will people be
comfortable with developing core GNOME Desktop applications with these
languages. Choice is good. Chaos is bad. 
 
-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc@murrayc.com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com