[sane-devel] question about next SANE release
stef
stef.dev at free.fr
Tue Nov 25 05:43:15 UTC 2008
Hello,
there have been a few inconclusive threads on the next release of SANE. I'd
really wish that a decision could be taken so we can make a release in not a
distant future.
If the current CVS is released as SANE 1.1, what would be the extent of the
changes ?
- only the rts8891 backend uses the new SANE_STATUS_WARMING_UP.
- only the canon_dr, fujitsu, coolscan3 and bh backends uses the new frame
formats
In the case someone installs the latest release without any care, there will
be no damages, and only -in some cases- the rts8891 backend could not be
used. In even rarer circumstances, if a new frame format is required, the scan
will fail. That's not that much.
Furthermore, someone working properly would read the release notes and be
informed of the changes. By shipping a compatibility meta backend, we will be
able to allow the safe use of the updated backends with not yet updated
frontends. Once SANE is released, the frontends coders will take notice and
will update at their own pace. There is already code in scanimage and
xscanimage which handles the new features that can be use as an example.
Due to the way the changes have been made in SANE, any existing backend (be
it out of tree or binary only) will still work as expected without being
touch at all.
So I really think we should carry on the initial plan, and release it as SANE
1.1 . It brings needed new features with very limited impact on frontends,
and no impact at all on external backends.
If there are serious enough reasons to raise the version to SANE 2, we can
still manage it through a compatibility meta backend and modifications in
dll.c to load existing binary backends along with the SANE 2 ones.
In any case there can't be new features without any impacts of some sort, and
we have the tools to mitigate them.
Regard,
Stef
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