1.0 stability constraints

Allison Randal allison at parrot.org
Sat Jan 17 07:21:01 UTC 2009


Simon Cozens wrote:
> 
> So what then? Do we get 1.0 out there anyway with no proper foundation
> for character set issues, putting it off once again, and then do another
> bigger and more disruptive change later on to get these things right? In
> what way does that make 1.0 "a stable API"?

You left off the important point "for language developers". I wrote 
about the plan more extensively on parrot.org[*]: "1.0 will provide them 
with a complete set of core subsystems and feature-rich compiler tools, 
with the guarantee that the interface will only change on the standard 6 
month deprecation cycle".

We will bring in critical pieces of changes to strings before 1.0. We 
won't make all the changes before 1.0. What you're working on now is 
highly experimental, and therefore highly unlikely to go into 1.0. The 
work between now and 1.0 is mainly cleanup, documentation, and packaging.

You're falling into the same trap that the rest of us have been falling 
into for years now, thinking of 1.0 as the pinnacle of perfection, after 
which point no further changes will ever be made to Parrot.

1.0 will happen, and development will continue. I mean, really, we need 
to reserve *some* interesting features to crow about in 1.5, 2.0, 3.0, 
etc. :)

Allison

[*] http://www.parrot.org/news/vision-for-1_0


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