[pulseaudio-discuss] Working with PA and jack

[Nix]

On 13 Jun 2009, Lennart Poettering outgrape:

> On Sat, 13.06.09 17:09, Nix (nix at esperi.org.uk) wrote:
>> In that case the likelihood of PA ever becoming a serious
>> infrastructural component are nil.
>
> Aha. Is that so.
>
>> Imagine the X or libc developers said the same thing!
>
> Come on, this is bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.
>
> Remember libc4, libc5, glibc?

Yeah. One breakage in the last twelve years, and a statement that there
will be further breakages over the maintainers' dead bodies.

> Remember xlib vs. xcb?

xlib still works. xlib wasn't broken by the introduction of xcb.

> Remember the gtk1, gtk11, gtk12, gtk2 jumps?

The reason why this was done in huge jumps was because the API of
gtk2 has *remained back-compatible*.

Rare, giant breakages are annoying but tolerable (the old system still
works). What's not is a constant trickle of tiny breakage: then it's
impossible to come up with something that works reliably against them.
See ffmpeg for a terrible example.

> We are going through transitions all the time, all across the
> landscape. And yes, eventually there will be one in PA land too. So
> what?

Every time they happen they annoy all your users. If they happen too
often you find you don't have any left. ABIs are important.