Re: [brlcad-devel] Version 7.22.0 and Shared Libs Update to 20: Are They Backwardly Compatible with 19?

[Christopher S. M. <br...@ma...>]

On Dec 06, 2012, at 11:52 AM, Christopher Sean Morrison <br...@ma...> wrote:

I, again, forgot about that doc. I think I once before suggested it,
but it would sure help me, and maybe others, to have that doc moved to
the top of the brlcad tree and renamed DEPRECATION or some other
BOLD-TITLE.
 
Good idea.  Will do, maybe as CHANGES.

This has been done.

I reviewed a few dozen other projects and CHANGES was indeed a common method across several projects that had similar intentions to announce deprecation, API, and tool changes affecting developers (separate from announcing user-visible changes).  For now, it's the same content, but it might be worthwhile to reorganize the file.  Suggestions welcome!

It doesn't yet address library version compatibility as nearly every release (even patch) is technically incompatible.  That is intentional, however, to encourage rapid API evolution.  We have a lot of issues that need to be fixed.  At least until we get a better handle on most of the core libraries (libbu, libbn, libnurbs, librt, libwdb, and libged), the roadmap entails:

getting all API comments in headers (nearly done),
adding missing functions and removing inconsistencies,
audit minimally and unused functions,
breaking up headers (more modular, faster compiles),
embedding examples for priority functions (partially done),
decoupling Tcl (at the C level),
revisiting doxygen groupings/comments (cleanup),
and publishing API guides for each library (html+pdf to website)
Cheers!
Sean