Hi all, we recently hid a lot of our public headers, to avoid frequent ABI breaks. As we start to gradually re-expose useful headers I think it will be good to have broad guidelines about the limits of what we expose.
One point I feel needs further discussion is the level (if any) at which we stop re-exposing abstractions that are needed only by the default implementations of higher abstractions. For example, we have the mc::Compositor class, the default implementation of which uses a mc::DisplayBufferCompositor(Factory), the default implementation of which uses a mc::Renderer(Factory). Each level we expose adds flexibility to the framework, but also increases our public API/ABI. Furthermore, the further down we move in the abstraction layers, the more potential for instability the API/ABI has, since it's affected more by surrounding implementation decisions (which tend to be more unstable) instead of higher level architectural decisions (which tend to be more stable). The level of exposure should be evaluated on a case by case basis, but here are some aspects that I think the answer depends on: 1. Whether the exposed abstractions represent core concepts 2. How much we want to encourage reuse of a particular default implementation, by exposing the interfaces of its re-implementable dependencies 3. Related to (2): How much easier this makes the lives of developers trying to use the Mir framework Thoughts? Thanks, Alexandros -- Mir-devel mailing list Mir-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/mir-devel
