[openbeos] Re: binary compatibility
- From: "Robert Medeiros" <robert.medeiros@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 21:53:22 EDT
>What do you think about this?
Personally, I'm inclined to agree. We have another decade's worth of OS
research and experience to benefit from, for one thing; this would
also *vastly* reduce the amount of reverse-engineering that needs to be
done, which IMHO greatly improves our chances for success. Not to
mention the fact that our developers are liable to have different
experience, preferences, opinions, etc. as to how things should be done
from that of the ex-Be engineers, and given that this is a voluntary
project we might keep better motivated given more freedom in terms of
internal design and whatnot.
>Binary compatibility is a nice concept because it means instant access
>to the thousands of apps written for the BeOS. But source
compatibility
>might be good enough. You have to convince hundreds of developers
>(especially ones who haven't published their source) to recompile,
but,
>if OpenBeOS is a success, I don't think this will be too hard.
Any of the volunteers on the list wanna write a bot to spider the net,
bebits and any other software sites, and download the source for every
BeOS app it can find? We can use it as a repository of test code, not
to mention preserving the code for future use should the developers
drift elsewhere, or suffer massive coronaries, or... <shrug>
>In a way, source compatibility is a better goal in the sense that it
>lets you implement things in whatever way works best. The programming
>API is the same, but the underlying code is as slick as you are
capable
>of making it.
>
>Still, it's a deviation from the original charter. Should we re-think
>this?
My $0.02: yes. Use R5.0.3 as our benchmark, and see what can be done to
improve on it, performance and design-wise. But source compatibility
for the 1.0 release should be maintained. After that we can see about
breaking the API - that's almost inevitable. :)
Rob
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