unity-dev team mailing list archive

[Ted Gould <ted@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2013-01-04 at 10:52 +0100, Didier Roche wrote:

> 
> - Nux broke its API and ABI and the build-dependency requirement
> wasn't bumped on unity
> - Compiz broke its API and ABI and the build-dependency requirement
> wasn't bumped on unity
> 
> Please, for the 2 laters, please bump the requirement on the depending
> package once you break the API. This is extremely important (and not
> the first time I have to do it myself) whereas quite easy to do in
> debian/control as you can see in the attached merge request:
> https://code.launchpad.net/~didrocks/unity/fix-ftbfs-2013/+merge/141876


This is actually impossible to do.  You were only able to do that
because you knew the revisions where the API changes were going to land
in.  But, since usually the Unity patch and the Nux patch are developed
in parallel, and which daily they'll land in are not determinate
(perhaps autolanding would fail) it's impossible to know the version
before landing, and especially when reviewing branches.

We discussed this at UDS.  You told me it would hardly happen so wasn't
worth considering.  I don't think you can ask people to now handle this
in their development.  This is something you'll have to continue to fix
by hand when it happens as there's no way to know enough information at
development time.

Ted

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