Re: Question about API stability of autoconf-archive

Philip Withnall <[email protected]> Mon, 26 Jan 2015 11:38:59 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.sysutils.autoconf.archive-maintainers
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Mon, 2015-01-26 at 12:06 +0100, Peter Simons wrote:
> Hi Philip,
> 
>  > What’s the API stability policy for autoconf-archive macros? Once a
>  > macro is in an autoconf-archive release, is it committed to API
>  > stability for ever, or is it free to break its API whenever it likes
>  > (subject to updating #serial)?
> 
> our macros can change their API. Every reasonable person understands, of
> course, that backwards compatibility shouldn't be broken lightly and it
> happens rarely, but in the end there's no mechanism in place to guarantee
> that a macro doesn't change its API. We do guarantee that every edit
> triggers a bump of the #serial number, though.

That’s very clear and reasonable, thanks. Perhaps this should be
documented on the autoconf-archive website so people don’t ask in
future?

Thanks again for all your work on autoconf-archive. It’s brilliant.

Philip

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