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Re: [hybi] Versioning is a anti-pattern

John Tamplin <jat@google.com> Thu, 02 September 2010 18:49 UTC

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From: John Tamplin <jat@google.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:50:00 -0400
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To: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
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Cc: hybi <hybi@ietf.org>
Subject: Re: [hybi] Versioning is a anti-pattern
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On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com> wrote:
> Versioning requres you to make all sorts of REALLY HARD choices, and runs
> the risk of imposing really onerous costs on implementors.  Thus, you need
> to be really convinced that there are really significant benefits before you
> embark on this difficult and risky course of action.  -Tim

Not versioning requires an implementor to make the same really hard
choices, plus the added complexity of trying to figure out which
version of the protocol the other version is speaking.

Once we get to the final version of the spec, I am fine with leaving
out a formal version identifier, and then when we get to the point of
wanting to add some non-backwards-compatible feature we can have the
discussion about adding versioning then.

However, I remain totally convinced that we have to have some version
identifier in the draft protocol, so we can tell different versions of
the draft apart.  We already have mutually incompatible
implementations in the wild, and having to come up with heuristics to
detect each new version that might be out there is going to get more
and more problematic.

-- 
John A. Tamplin
Software Engineer (GWT), Google

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