Re: API review for 1.11; do we need to mark new APIs as experimental?

On 16.09.2018 21:04, Nathan Hartman wrote:
> Returning an error code is probably a better option but many such
> functions may accumulate over time -- unless they are only kept for
> some predefined length of time and then ultimately removed.

I disagree. "Experimental" means "not for production" and also "may
vanish at any time, even in a patch release." If some downstream
developer decides to publish a tool that depends on experimental APIs,
and we remove those APIs or modify them, causing the downstream dev's
users to see breakage: that is *not* our problem. It's the problem of
whoever decided to ignore our "experimental" designation.

Typically we should use the "experimental" tag only for things that our
command-line tools use for feature development that spans more than one
release, and for nothing else.

-- Brane

P.S.: This reminds me that our svn_mtcc_ API is private, yet used by
svnmucc; it should be public and tagged experimental instead, our tools
really shouldn't depend on private APIs.
Received on 2018-09-16 21:30:02 CEST