[maemo-developers] [Hildon-Extras] New widgets: about dialog, simple color dialog

[From: Thomas Perl]

2010/2/15 Cornelius Hald <hald at icandy.de>:
> The question is, whether or not we want that. If we release a library, we
> will have to deal with API compatibility in successive versions, etc.

I think it would be helpful to create/ship a library. If we don't want
to create a shared library just yet, we can always create a static
library + some "compatibility level" C macros to issue compiler errors
when the API changes (HE_ASSUME_API_LEVEL(1)?) against which packages
link against (and depend on the -dev package). Any API changes could
then be documented on the webpage or the wiki, with help and code
examples on how to "upgrade" to a newer API version to make it easier
for developers to upgrade to a new hildon-extras API version. Of
course, this means that application packages that are not updated
might not build from source in the future (source packages can be
easily changed to the new API version; due to the static library,
binary packages will not break).

Even a static library seems to be a better solution than copy'n'paste.
I believe that if users of hildon-extras (developers using HE in their
projects) start to copy'n'paste stuff, they might add new features and
fixes only in their local version, making it a nightmare for the HE
maintainers to go and "collect" all fixes from different projects and
merge them into the hildon-extras repository (it's also tedious
merging changes from HE to the local copy). A compiler error pointing
to a Wiki page that describes how to upgrade to a newer API version
seems much more developer-friendly and allows us to improve things
without requiring to commit to a fixed API too early.

After some months when the bugs and API annoyance are ironed out, we
can create a shared library and provide API/ABI compatibility.

Please point out any thought errors that I might have had here ;)

Thomas