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

On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 02:22:48AM -0500, James Ralston wrote:

[snip]

I think you're confusing my position (I won't speak for Dan, he obviously is more then capable of speaking for himself. :)

Basically, my position is that IF you are going to rename one of the libraries, then libnet-1.1 from now and for eternity should be known as libnet2. That way no current or future compatibility is broken, except for the handful of apps (one of which I maintain) using 1.1 today.

> On 2003-03-05 at 18:36:27-0800 Dan Kegel <dkegel@ixiacom.com> wrote:

Ok, that sure sounded like trying to force or at least push people into migrating to 1.1 to me. :)

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No, the barrier for people moving to 1.1 is that the API is completely different. People don't like change. Making all their apps no longer compile isn't going to get them to rewrite a chunk of code in most cases (as evidence of this, I point out how few apps have been ported), it's just going to get people pissed when endusers try compiling code that doesn't know about libnet0 and complain to the author about how their crappy code doesn't compile, and so the author gets defensive and says it's not his crappy code, it's Mike's/the distro's fault because they broke compatibility.

> If I'm interpreting your (plural) reasoning correctly, it's "since

Personally, I don't think calling it 'libnet2' makes it "the alternate version". People will use what is available and suits them. And I think the simple fact is that:

1. Most distros don't want to break backwards compatibilty. Their users get pissed about stuff like that.
2. Most coders won't use a library until he/she feels that the user either already has it installed or is likely to install it.

To me, that means, you can't rename 1.0 and 1.1 won't get installed until they both can live on a system together. The only other option I see is to call libnet 1.1 something new.

> The only good reason to change the name of the new version of a

I'm not arguing which is preferred. We all prefer 1.1, so that's not the issue. The issue is getting people to actually INSTALL 1.1. And you can't put the cart before the horse. You can't install a library that breaks all your apps until those apps migrate over to the new library.

> All of the pre-libnet-1.1 tarballs are in the "deprecated" subdir.

So basically what you're saying is that all the authors who use libnet 1.0 in their app should now ship 1.0 with their code and statically link against it if they don't want to port to 1.1? Or am I missreading that above statement?

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Honestly, if you want distro's to use 1.1 there is really only one way I can see this happening: Someone port Nmap to 1.1. If you port Nmap to 1.1 then everyone in their grandmother will start porting their code. Once that happens, 1.1 will become *the* version to use in the developer community and distros won't have any problems shiping 1.1 as libnet.h.

Basically, Nmap is a tool that everyone has/wants to run. Users are most likely to replace 1.0 with 1.1 if a tool like Nmap requires it.

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