[openbeosstorage] Compatibility Policy

Hi,

I wonder, if there is a guideline, how to deal with R5 compatiblity
issues. I don't mean general binary compatibility, but kind of behavioral
compatibility, concerning e.g.:

* R5 bugs:
  Shall R5 bugs be reproduced by OBOS? Some applications rely on bugs.

* R5 inconsistencies:
  Shall inconsistencies of R5 be reproduced? I don't have the code at
  hand, so I can't give an example, but I remember, that I had two
  versions of a method, that returned different results for the same
  input. Boolean methods, btw...

* error codes:
  Could probably be subsumed under inconsistencies as well.
  For instance the return value, when invoking a method on an
  uninitialized object (a method that requires it to be initialized, of
  course) varies from B_NO_INIT over B_FILE_ERROR, B_BAD_VALUE to crashs
  (if we consider those return values ;-). Or passing a NULL value for a
  required parameter might result in B_BAD_VALUE, B_BAD_ADDRESS,
  B_NO_INIT or, again, a crash.

Personally I would like to have each of these items fixed (bugs might be
worth a second thought though).

Especially for the error codes I would like to have some standardization;
like what to return on what error and in which order to check for errors.

What do you think?

CU, Ingo

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