Re: to bump or note to bump

[Brett Lymn <blymn%internode.on.net@localhost>]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2022 at 01:28:56PM -0000, Christos Zoulas wrote:
> 
> 1. Is there a way to have a "compatibility mode"? Or is that too complicated
>    or unwanted?

I could make a compile time option to switch back to the old behaviour.
I just tried it and curses seems to work, I don't think the screen
initialisation is quite as optimal but it gets there in the end.  Of
course, the automated testing blows up because the output is different.

> 2. Bumping the library version is probably not necessary because there
>    is no ABI change, but I can see that perhaps changing how the programs
>    look when the library is updated is unexpected and perhaps there is
>    a benefit doing so.

Yes, this seems to be the consensus.  I think kre@ suggested a minor
version bump which probably is a good thing to do and doesn't have the
same impact as a major bump.

> 3. I noticed that there is no version number in <curses.h>. Perhaps programs
>    could use that to check the version and alter their behavior with respect
>    to colors if it existed?
> 

Yes, this has been suggested before.  I personally don't particularly
like the idea as I am not sure what use it would be especially given
that NetBSD libcurses is a fairly niche offering in a sea of ncurses I
cannot see it getting much, if any, use.

-- 
Brett Lymn
--
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