From kde-core-devel  Fri Jul 13 19:23:35 2001
From: Rik Hemsley <rik () kde ! org>
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:23:35 +0000
To: kde-core-devel
Subject: Re: What to do after 2.2?
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=99506881705101

#if Torsten Rahn
> Rob Kaper wrote:
> > This looks like breaking binary compatiblity twice and technically it will
> > be, on the other hand 2.9 should by no means be considered as official
> > release.
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong but last time I talked to core-developers the
> idea was that for KDE 3.0 we break BC only where really necessary.

Moving to Qt 3 and gcc3 breaks BC completely, so whatever we do in
kdelibs isn't a factor there. Perhaps you mean source compatibility ?
There are definitely benefits to keeping as much source compatibility
as possible:

* Porting can be as simple as a recompile, perhaps a bit of sed.

* The KDE 2.0 development book is still fairly accurate.

* Developers don't have to re-learn their skills.

> After all one of the reasons why there are so many GTK-applications is
> that they had a more or less stable API for a long time. If we make KDE
> 3.0 anything beyond something that is slightly more than a recompile
> then you shouldn't expect that the number of KDE-applications will grow
> significantly over the next 9-12 months which would really bad in effect
> and which would push us quite a bit back.
> Who wants to develop for a platform if it changes every few months?

Ah, you do mean source compatibility then.

Rik