[maemo-developers] Maemo 5 PR1.2 and Extras

[From: Dave Neary]

Hi,

Michael Cronenworth wrote:
> How can you not like this? What is your reasoning? You brought this same
> response to the last Maemo update, and I still do not understand it.

Let's say that there are 10,000 applications in Extras.

Now every N900 owner can get all of those apps.

Then a new version of the SDK comes out, which is not backwards
compatible. A number of potentially bad things can happen:

1. New uploads get compiled with the new SDK, and get downloaded onto
phones with the old OS, where they don't work.

2. Developers working with the old SDK upload applications which don't
even build with the new SDK

3. To mitigate 2, we decide that all Extras apps need to be recompiled
with the new SDK, resulting in a number of applications which fit into
both the categories above - some apps stop working until the user
upgrades the firmware, other apps don't build & require changes and an
SDK upgrade from the developer.

All of these push inconvenience to the phone user & application
developer - all unnecessary overhead, especially if the APIs haven't
changed and there are issues with run-time library versions (as we saw
with PR 1.0 to 1.1).

The only way to avoid badness when upgrading the SDK in a
not-backwards-compatible way is to have scratchbox, every developer copy
of the SDK, and the N900 firmware all upgrade at the same time. I
imagine that this is why Graham's not happy about an SDK which isn't
backwards compatible.

Cheers,
Dave.

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