Re: User perception on backward compatibility

[Mike Gran]

> From: Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden>

> 
> Hello!
> 
> I think the next big task will be to list and try to reduce
> incompatibilities compared to 1.8.
> 
> For the record, here’s what I found in GNU Dico; it’s interesting to see
> how its maintainer feels about backward compatibility in Guile:
> 
>   http://mail.gnu.org.ua/archives/html/public/bug-dico/threads.html#00000

Guile's API has always fairly incompatibly from revision to 
revision.  Each rev always requires a significant rewrite of the glue
code in Guile-using projects.

Just in the time that I've been using Guile, I've used four different 
functions to convert an integer into a guile number: gh_int2scm, 
SCM_MAKINUM, scm_int2num, scm_from_int.

A lot of projects have their own Guile compatibility layers to map
current practice to a consistent API: AutoGen, Geda, even Gucu.

Maybe we need a gnulib-like project for guile ;-)

So, yeah, reducing incompatibilities might be nice.

Thanks,
Mike