[sane-devel] [RFC] how to enable 1.1 features

[m. allan noah]

On 2/28/08, Alessandro Zummo <azummo-lists at towertech.it> wrote:
>  > With your repeated requests to make other API changes, and your
>  > willingness to write code, how about we bite this bullet and re-open
>  > the discussion about building a new, simpler sane2?
>
>  because I don't want to discuss, I want to write code. I very
>   much like the linux development model. discussion is based on code,
>   not the other way around. Write a little, discuss a little, repeat.
>
>   But they have Linus as the ultimate deus-ex-machina :)
>
>   But while in linux there's willing to evolve and change, here this
>   willingness is restricted to a few individuals.
>
>   An interesting read about that can be found in
>   http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Kernel_Evolution
>
>   28 people contributed to the last two changelogs, but
>   only a few here are saying what they would like to do.
>
>   Even if their desire is to keep the thing as is, it is
>   very much important to say it.

That is not quite a fair characterization- linux does NOT change its
userspace ABI in every release, no one would use it! Yes, the kernel
module API changes all the time, but linux contains both the kernel
AND the modules. we dont have the luxury of shipping all the frontends
and backends in one package.

the current sane2 draft standard is overly complex (particularly in
frame handling) and has not been touched in years. I would not
implement it without a complete re-examination of it. But, if we call
it the sane3 draft, and implement something very, very small as sane2,
then we will get your desired effect of frequent advancements, and
protect the frontend authors and users from a mess, by using a
soversion bump.

so what if sane will have a new soversion once a year? lots of other
libs do worse...

allan
-- 
"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"