Re: [hybi] Versioning is a anti-pattern

[David Orchard <[e-mail]>]

Martin, you said:

> Yes, indeed. The version number would only be changed if there were some
> very basic changes in the protocol. The tremendous difficulty isn't so much
> coming from a fundamental problem with versioning (if there indeed were some
> very basic protocol changes, there would probably be wide agreement with
> changing the version number) but from the fact that nobody currently is
> interested in very basic changes in the HTTP protocol (if you exclude this
> group :-).

Which is accurate, but I think that is partially because of what I
mentioned before, that the HTTP version identifier semantics weren't
defined enough.  If it was "easy" to version HTTP from 1.1 to say 1.2
with some optional components, then we may have done so.  But because
HTTP did not do anything like what I mentioned before, such as
something akin to "Minor versions are guaranteed to be compatible
changes and any unknown components may be ignored and must not cause a
fault in a receiver" or somesuch wording, than 1.1 made it very
difficult to create a version of HTTP that was forwards compatible
with existing receivers.

Cheers,
Dave