On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Mathieu Bouchard <matju@artengine.ca> wrote:

On Tue, 30 Aug 2011, Peter Brinkmann wrote:

For the time being, I have something much simpler in mind: Just take the current call "int libpd_start_message(void)", which returns the current limit, and replace it with "int libpd_start_message(int length)", which takes a parameter indicating the length of the message and returns a nonzero error code if the length is too big.

But this means that new libpd-using apps won't compile with old versions of libpd AND vice-versa.

Well, the vast majority of users won't notice any difference at all because they're using the Android or iOS branch, which I'm updating as I go along.  The only people who are affected by this are those who are using the C library directly, and I hope that they'll either be willing to update their code (which should be no more than a two-line change in most cases) or just stick to the current version, which will remain available via git.

In any case, I think everybody understands that this is still a young library that needs to adapt as we gain a better understanding of how people are using it, and the cost of making a small incompatible change is a lot lower than choosing a suboptimal solution for compatibility with an earlier version.  This period of youthful innocence is coming to an end, though; the API has been quite stable for quite a while now, and I believe that it'll soon be time to declare it finished.  I want to take a critical look at every piece before we officially lock the API, and I won't be afraid to cut things that may turn out to be a burden in the long run.  (That's why I floated the idea of getting rid of the simple message assembly mechanism, but it looks like that's here to stay.)
Cheers,
     Peter