re: API

Bob Gilligan <Bob.Gilligan@eng.sun.com> Thu, 11 February 1993 22:16 UTC

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Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 14:08:02 -0800
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From: Bob Gilligan <Bob.Gilligan@eng.sun.com>
Message-Id: <9302112208.AA25562@bigriver.Eng.Sun.COM>
To: ericf@atc.boeing.com
Subject: re: API
Cc: criteria@ftp.com, Bob.Gilligan@eng.sun.com
Content-Length: 1023
Status: OR

> From: Eric Fleischman <ericf@atc.boeing.com>
> Subject: API
> Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 15:13:02 -0800
>
> I would like to propose yet another IPvN Selection Criteria.  This 
> criteria is that the IPvN solutions be able to use the existing TCP/IP
> Transport Layer APIs unchanged. . . .

A couple of features that we thought were desirable in designing the
BSD API for SIP, and which would probably be desirable in an API for
the other IPvN ideas, are:

  -	Binary compatibility for pre-existing applications that use
	the old API.

  -	Source compatibility for pre-existing applications that use
	the old API re-compiled on a new system.

Old program binaries and new binaries compiled from old sources should
continue to run and operate at least as well as if they were running
on an IPv4 system.

If you assume that the address is going to get longer, its hard to
envision not changing the API at all.  The trick is to continue to
support for the old API, and have the programs that use it continue to
do something useful.