Re: Package naming when no backward compatibility at all?

["J. Lewis Muir" <jlmuir%imca-cat.org@localhost>]

On 10/19, J. Lewis Muir wrote:
> On 10/19, Greg Troxel wrote:
> > (You haven't named it either, so nobody else could look.)
> 
> I think it would not be easy to find out, so I didn't think it would be
> useful to name it.  But anyway, it's EPICS and the various modules and
> extensions for it:
> 
> * https://epics-controls.org/
> * https://epics.anl.gov/
> 
> Here's a link into a related mailing list thread (which also points to
> another thread) on upstream's backward compatibility stance:
> 
> * https://epics.anl.gov/core-talk/2021/msg00523.php

Here's one more link into a mailing list thread:

  https://epics.anl.gov/tech-talk/2020/msg00069.php

In that, one of the EPICS developers says the following:

  EPICS has never promised binary compatibility between releases, no
  matter what the version number change has been, so you should *always*
  rebuild everything downstream from source code after upgrading Base
  to a new version.  We don't have the resources to do compatibility
  testing between binary versions, and we don't generally worry about
  whether changes will break the ABI when making them.  For example,
  in the latest Base-3.15.7 and EPICS 7.0.3.1 releases the fields
  of some of the record types were moved around while adding record
  reference documentation to the dbd files, so any external device
  support built using earlier versions would use the wrong field offsets
  when accessing the record field structures.

  It may be more work to rebuild everything (unless you automate; I
  suggest looking at Sumo), but I don't recommend gambling if you could
  get phone-calls at 2am when some feature of your beamline stops
  working after an upgrade.

I had forgotten about this, but reading it again makes me feel like
maybe I should err on the side of a revbump for every version change,
but that's of course different from what you were suggesting.  Do you
still feel the way you do after reading the above statement from the
EPICS developer where he says one should always rebuild everything
downstream after an EPICS version change?

Of course, this is just for EPICS, not for modules nor extensions, but
at the same time, people that write the modules or extensions might have
a similar software development philosophy because they're part of that
community, which is why I was planning to do a revbump for every module
and extension as well to be safe.  What do you think?

Regards,

Lewis