Private header files [was Re: svn commit: r33207 - branches/file-externals/subversion/libsvn_client]

Greg Stein wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 11:09 PM, Blair Zajac <blair_at_orcaware.com> wrote:
>> Greg Stein wrote:
>> Presumably being in include/private means it can be used across lib's.
>
> This isn't right... Our libraries should not have privileged access to
> certain APIs that other users cannot reach. IOW, all 38 lines must
> change :-P

That's the purpose of all the headers in private:

   $ cat subversion/include/private/README
   Header files in this private/ directory are for internal APIs shared
   across Subversion's implementation. They are not part of the public
   API, nor are they ever copied into or under the include/ directory
   (e.g. by the installation process).

You're effectively suggesting removing the entire include/private directory and
promoting all the functions to public. Why would we want to do that? There may
be APIs that we only want to support internally and not have the maintain in a
public API.

The only case I see for changing this is if we were to allow our libraries to be
versioned independently so if you chance a private API without versioning it you
can break the ABI, but we don't do that, so if we change a private API, it'll
still be internally consistent across all the libs.

I don't feel that strongly about it, as long as I can use the functions I need
to make my coding easier :)

Blair

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Received on 2008-09-20 17:19:17 CEST