Re: api differences between 1.4 and 1.6

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Rob Browning <address@hidden>
   Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 12:02:23 -0600

   Unless we've got someone who can work hard on this right now, and get
   it done, then I think we should just work on these as we can, and go
   ahead with 1.6.1 when everything else is ready.  We can plan to
   continue fixing the documentation, assisted by user feedback, and
   release a 1.6.2 with the additions as soon as appropriate.

i'm working on a script to do this at the moment...

let's get 1.5.5 out first and see what happens.  i think if we release
1.6.x w/o this kind of support documentation, the migration rate from
1.4 will be very low (although its adoption rate by newcomers will
probably be moderate -- until they get burned by some undocumented or
poorly explained change and leave guile for good, in the process
spreading the news that guile is improperly maintained and a PITA).

people are unhappy w/ 1.4 release process already (at least i am, which
explains why i'm doing 1.4.1), the result being some people still stick
w/ 1.3.4 or only use cvs guile.  repeating the same mistakes is not
going to help.

btw, an issue has arisen wrt libguile versioning.  guile-1.4 used 9.0.0,
and it looks like 1.5.x has been using 10.0.0.  i'd like to request
1.5.x to use 11.x.x, so that i can release guile-1.4.1 w/ 10.x.x, which
would be basically the same as 9.0.0, but without the embedded libltdl.
this would help ease migration a little.

have you been following cvs commits to the HEAD branch?  what do you
think of adding devel/build/libguile-versioning-roadmap?  here's an
initial stab:

  version       guile           description
  6.???         1.3.4           (todo: excavate me)
  9.0.0         1.4             includes libltdl
  10.0.0        1.4.x           same as 9.0.0, w/o libltdl
  11.0.0        1.5.x, 1.6.x    completely new

this is woefully under-detailed and incomplete, and the first thing
people who use libguile look for (and don't find).  if we can change our
ways to value and maintain these kinds of documentation, we serve the
users better and practice good engineering as well.

(if we can't, i guess i am ready to join those who abandoned guile.)

thi