Dan Christian wrote:
> On 9/28/07, Ben Collins-Sussman wrote:
>> To be utterly clear: from the user's point of view, there is no
>> compile-time or run-time dependency on any particular version of swig.
>> The svn release tarball ships with bindings that are
>> ready-to-compile, with no external dependencies.
>>
>> So it's irrelevant what version of swig happens to ship in any
>> particular linux distro. The *only* people who need a certain version
>> of swig available are svn developers building from a working copy.
>
> It was always clear that SWIG was optional for users and developers
> who don't touch the bindings.
>
> It's just that many developers use the same slow release distros as
> the users (its called a "day job" :-). So touching the swig bindings
> (with a 1.3.31 requirement) means building and installing swig from
> scratch.
./configure
make
make install
done.
> Which is fine if you get something for it. So far, no one has said
> what is the gain is of requiring 1.3.31 instead of 1.3.27. There were
> comments that 1.3.25 was a bit change, but nothing more specific than
> that.
* Discarding compatibility code.
* Developers not having to think about differences across a broad range
of versions.
* Developers not having to *TEST* so many versions.
> I'm just trying to keep the developer barrier to entry as low as is
> practical ('cause it might make my life easier :-).
Weigh the possible need for a new developer to download swig and run
"./configure && make && make install" against the expectation of
producing patches which are functional across a broad range of swig
versions - I think it's justifiable to say that tightening up the
allowed version range actually lowers the real developer barrier a bit.
Max.
Received on Sat Sep 29 00:28:15 2007