Whether tis nobler to break backwards compat or upstream compat...

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2005-04-13 at 12:00 -0400, Toshio wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-04-13 at 08:18 -0700, Shahms King wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-04-13 at 11:14 -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> > > Shahms King (shahms at shahms.com) said: 
> > > > One of the packages I maintain in Extras (python-quixote) just released
> > > > the next stable version (2.0).  This version is not (entirely) backwards
> > > > compatible with the current 1.2 version and is not parallel installable.
> > > 
> I think tradition has been to package (2.0) as python-quixote and if
> someone needed python-quixote-1.x to make a python-quixote1 package
This is only possible if both packages can be installed in parallel or
if both packages are strictly orthogonal alternatives.

Otherwise adding a "backward legacy" package is not possible.

> unless upstream has made the decision to make things parallel
> installable (as in gtk2 vs gtk+).
That's the way "clever" developers should handle cases like this. The
Quixote folks not having done so gives an insight about their foresight.

> Witness the fact that we have php rather than php5 for instance.
In general, this only applicable if (package+1) replaces (package) and
if (package+1) is sufficiently compatible to (package).

I know to little about php3/php4/php5 to judge if this decision is
reasonable wrt. php.

> > > Does anything currently use it that would need ported?
> > > 
> > > Bill
> > 
> > Nothing in Extras, but it's still a rude thing to do to anyone who was
> > using it ... (but is a relatively new package...)
> 
> Since this was put in so recently (past month, right?) I'd move FC3 and
> FC4 to python-quixote 2.0.

ACK.

>   If someone needs quixote-1.2 it can be added
> as a python-quixote1 package.
As I tried to express above, I doubt this will be possible.

Ralf