[packagekit] PackageKit on different operating systems

[Richard Hughes]

On 18 October 2010 16:41, Laszlo Papp <djszapi at archlinux.us> wrote:
> packagekit-qt and other libraries. Whether the frontend developers
> (like KPackageKit) can count with binary compatibility if the API
> changes and you provide a new release.
> I would not like that my program falls apart every time packagekit
> version changes.

Ohh, I see. Yes, packagekit-glib2 and packagekit-qt are ABI and API
stable, all thoughout the 0.6.x series. If we break API, we also
change the project minor version, which happens very infrequently. You
can see http://packagekit.org/pk-download.html for an approximate view
of how often API major bumps happen. As a rule, packagekit-qt seems to
have larger changes, but that's only because it's newer and now seems
to have settled down to a few minor changes each release.

When we do break API and create a new branch, the old branch is
maintained for between 6 months and 2 years, depending on which
distros are using it.

I'm also pretty good at bumping the LT numbers when required, so you
can rest assured the libraries will be stable for quite some time.

Richard.