[Xcb] Re RFC: The need to break the API. (Im)Possible?

[Steven Stewart-Gallus]

----- Original Message -----
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 22:11:41 +0200
rom: Daniel Martin <consume.noise at gmail.com>
To: xcb at lists.freedesktop.org
Subject: [Xcb] RFC: The need to break the API. (Im)Possible?
Message-ID: <20140719201140.GA2767 at unplugged.fritz.box>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
 
> Dear list readers,
> 
> we've had a few places in proto we couldn't fix correctly as a correct
> fix would break the API of libxcb, recently. Then I see a lot of 
> placesin proto that should be changed to represent the actual 
> protocol more
> precisely. To mention a few:
> - replace valueparams with switch/bitcases
> - replace unions with switch/cases (yes, they aren't supported yet)
> - or just the typo "permament":
>    http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xcb/proto/tree/src/xkb.xml#n471
> 
> I would like to contribute such changes to proto, but they all 
> break the
> API of libxcb. So, does anyone has an idea how we can handle such
> changes?
> 
> 
> Cheers,
>    Daniel
> 
> PS: Replacing unions with switch/cases is one requirement if anyone 
> ever    wants to generate the byte-swapping code for the server. ;)

I agree with Josh Triplett that API change is not a worry and that ABI
change is.  I believe that approaches similiar to the one I advocated
in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=80044 work for API
changes.

Before we break ABI can we get a look at all the pending issues for
backwards compatible API changes? If anyone on the list who has a pet
issue that they'd like to be easily searchable by people who could fix
that issue than it might be nice if they would tag it with some tag
like "API" or maybe "API-backwards-compatible".