Re: EPICS release series after 7.0: 7.1 or 8.0? (ABI)

["J. Lewis Muir via Tech-talk" <tech-talk@aps.anl.gov>]

On 01/09, Mark Rivers wrote:
> > If EPICS and all of the EPICS modules cared about API and ABI compatibility, I suspect they would not break it as often, 
> > and I think this would result in an easier time upgrading EPICS and EPICS modules in that I wouldn't have to change as much source code for API changes, 
> 
> Can you tell me the last time you had to change your source code for an API change?  

It was last April when I had to change my source code that worked with
EPICS 3.14 to work with EPICS 3.15 because EPICS 3.15 renamed the
errlogRemoveListener function to errlogRemoveListeners and changed its
signature.

This isn't a particularly useful data point, though, because it was
for a user.  I've remained on the same snapshot of EPICS and EPICS
modules for quite some time, so I haven't attempted an upgrade for a
while and hence have not been in a position where I might discover
incompatibilities.

> Was that a change you think could be been avoided, and how?

Probably, by providing a backward compatible function, but I'd have to
look at the change to be sure.
 
> > and I would have a better chance of avoiding so-called "dependency hell."
> 
> Please describe the last time you had a "dependency hell" with EPICS.

It was probably in 2016 when I was upgrading modules in synApps to make
things work with the new quadEM driver for the CAENels TetrAMM, but I'm
not sure.  There had not been a new release of synApps for a long time.
I think synApps was stuck on 5.8 for over a year.  I felt like I had to
upgrade half of the modules in synApps 5.8.  But again, because I didn't
document exactly what I changed, I can't give you a very good answer.

Lewis