[Cuis] Compatability and Version

[Juan Vuletich]

Hi Ken,

It looks useful to me. So, each package should have a version number, 
having the convention that major version allows incompatibilities, while 
minor version changes must be back compatible. I addition, each package 
should specify which packages it depends on, and which major version 
numbers of them are supported.

Is all this what you mean?

I think it would be good. It would require some dev. effort. I'm a bit 
short of time lately... :(

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

Ken Dickey wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> While we are discussing package dependencies, I thought to bring up an old concept: Compatibility Numbers.
>
> The basic idea is that one updates a version number with each release, but one only increments a compatibility number when there is an INcompatible change to an API.
>
> Software can know the past (and deal with it) but not the future. Checking  compatibility of required package dependencies is a quick and cheap sanity check.  If the compatibility number of a package is higher than some software knows about, then it can pop up a warning or take some other action.
>
> While I don't really want to introduce version numbers for packages, I do like compatibility numbers.
>
> Does this sound like overkill or a useful convention?
>
> $0.02,
> -KenD
>
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