Re: [RFC] Renaming libnet-1.1.1 to libnet2-1.1.1

Well time for me to throw in my .02. Yes, API's change. However, to expect all or even a majority of programs to support *both* API's just isn't all that realistic. While a "few #ifdef's" in tcptraceroute may not of been a problem, it was a horrific mess in tcpreplay which for a time supported both 1.0 and 1.1.

We supported that for the 1.3.x tree to give our users time to move over and to give other applications time to support 1.1 too. A few things became apparent very quickly:

1. "horrific mess" is an understatement.
2. Very few other authors bothered to follow us and port to 1.1.

Finally, I just said the hell with it, and dropped 1.0 support when I started the 1.4 branch. For what it's worth, we've had about 1200 downloads of the two 1.4 beta's and not one person has yet to complain that we broke support for 1.0.

In my opinion, if you want most authors to support the new 1.1 API, then both versions have to co-exist on a system. Most authors aren't going to port over until one of two things happen:

1. 1.1 has something they need/want that 1.0 doesn't
2. Enough users move to 1.1 that the complaints are rolling in fast enough to warrent wanting to shut them up.

Right now, IMHO, neither case exists for most authors. Oh, and if someone wants to develop a patch for tcpreplay to re-support 1.0 I'll ship the patch with the tarball, but I will not apply it to the tree. It just makes the code way too ugly to be maintainable.

With that said, if your goal is to get people to stop using 1.0 and start writing code for 1.1, then make it so both libraries can co-exist. Otherwise, only people like me who really don't care what his users think will move to 1.1. ;-)

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my .02

-- 
Aaron Turner     
http://synfin.net/aturner
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety 
deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
All emails by me are PGP signed; a lack of a signature indicates a forgery.

On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 05:45:13PM -0500, James Ralston wrote:

> On 2003-03-05 at 14:10:28-0800 Dan Kegel <dkegel@ixiacom.com> wrote: