[ofw] [PATCH] Bump up CI and AL interface version numbers

Hefty, Sean sean.hefty at intel.com
Tue Aug 26 10:05:11 PDT 2008


>You're confusing release numbers with interface versions.  If you change an
>interface, you should change the number - it's not the same interface.  Whether
>the interface version is 1 or 1000 is irrelevant to the end user, but not to
>the developer.  It doesn't matter if the release number changes or not, the
>interface changed.  There's no reason to artificially keep the numbers low -
>it's much more valuable to allow upgrades of drivers without requiring
>rebuilding the system form the ground up.

You're letting an arbitrary separation of patches dictate what the interface version should be.  We *should* be providing libraries that support *all* kernel interface versions.  Applications can also be written to use different library interfaces.  You don't need to bump the interface version for every single change - only once for a set of collective changes.  This makes it easier to support multiple interfaces.

As for release numbers, the major release numbers (should) indicate a change to the interface that is not backwards compatible.

- Sean



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