Re: [boost] Breaking existing libraries

Subject: Re: [boost] Breaking existing libraries
From: Johan Nilsson (r.johan.nilsson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-11-21 07:02:26

David Abrahams wrote:
> on Thu Nov 20 2008, Tomas Puverle
> <Tomas.Puverle-AT-morganstanley.com> wrote:
>
>> You may or may not have noticed a thread I started on boost.users
>> about the breaking changes to Boost.Range.   Here’s a short summary:
>> We are currently (firmwide) using boost 1.33.1.  I am in the process
>> of trying to migrate and test some of our apps with boost 1.37.  In
>> 1.35 there was a breaking change to Boost.Range with respect to how
>> singular ranges behave.  This brings up several issues:
>>

[snip]

>> At the moment, I have to say I don’t have a good answer to how to fix
>> our code.  However, I would at least like to try to make sure this
>> kind of silent breakage doesn’t happen again.
>
> Hi Tom,
>
> Yes, this is an unfortunate situation.  If you indeed want to try to
> make sure this kind of silent breakage doesn’t happen again, there's
> something you can do about it: write a page of library maintenance
> guidelines on the wiki at http://svn.boost.org.  We are sorely
> missing a policy on this, and when less-experienced library authors
> come along,
> they often don't hew to the same standards that many of us take for
> granted.  If you don't have write permission for the wiki, please let
> us know and we'll send you an invitation.

Just an idea that popped out of my head - what about running (or at least 
compiling) the unit/regression tests from the _previous_ major release 
against the current release as a way to automatically detect and flag 
interface/behavioral changes?

Sure, there are many potential problems with such an approach:

- Some library tests are likely to also excercise code at the 
implementation/detail level.
- Already limited testing resources (on the other hand, interface changes 
are likely to be detected by running such tests for a single, reasonably 
compliant, compiler).
- ...

Anyway, this is mostly me thinking out loud; perhaps someone smarter than me 
could expand on the feasibility of such an idea.

/ Johan