Re: git, porcelain, darcs, and version 1.0

From: Juliusz Chroboczek <juliusz.chroboczek@pps.jussieu.fr>
Date: Jul 18, 2005, 19:49 UTC
Message-ID: <7id5pfx5ci.fsf@lanthane.pps.jussieu.fr>
In-Reply-To: <42DB341D.6050506@gmail.com>

> I certainly don't think the lib interface is anywhere near stable:
> Linus accepted my change to index_fd far too easily.

Noted, thanks for the info.

(This makes a lot of sense, Git is evolving very fast. I haven't looked at Git since mid-April, and I'm very much impressed at the difference between 0.6 and 0.99.)

> Ugh.  That's what they do in the commercial world.  We have it so much
> better here in Linux & BSD land: you just add a "depends libgit1" line
> to your package, and the right thing happens: minor updates happen
> automatically and changes that break the interface don't.

This is, of course, only possible when there are stable interfaces, which in turn make change problematic. (Which, as far as I understand, is the very reason why the Linux kernel tree contains everyone's and his brother's driver rather than having a stable module ABI, but that's besides the point.)

> Darcs and git work together to determine the minimal amount
> that needs to go into libgit1.so.

Hold on... Nobody is speaking about *binary* compatibility, it's source-level compatibility that we need. There is absolutely no reason to introduce the complexities of shared libraries into the picture.

                                        Juliusz