Melvin Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The easy situation is when argument counts change, but the hard situation is when semantics have changed. In that case we have to have some sort of version requirement in the bytecode.
Best practice I've seen for this is to have a library advertise 2 version numbers: "Compatible" version, and "current" version. When searching for a library to link with, the compatible version must match, and of those the latest "current" version wins. These versions are usually integers unrelated to the version number of any particular product. -- But maintaining these puts a lot of faith in the library's author.
Putting full faith in library authors has, historically, been ill-advised in the general case, but we can do some things to help that out and let folks have at least a chance of getting things right.
--
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
