Re: [hybi] Versioning is a anti-pattern

[David Orchard <[e-mail]>]

I think the expression that versioning is an anti-pattern for the web
is in the context of human authored HTML documents, where people
notoriously view source and cut 'n paste that results in the wrong
DTDs, etc.  I don't think that a large number of people will be
cutting and pasting text containing versioning information to hybi
protocol messages, so that advice doesn't apply to hybi imo.

However, protocols that have many optional features might not do well
with single string version identifiers.  HTTP's use of version numbers
asserting the capabilities of the server rather than the features used
by the message has worked pretty well at a coarse grained level but
the different feature negotiations have had varying degrees of
success.

A lack of versioning, and I don't mean just using identifiers, is
pretty risky.  Interesting question as to whether HTTP version
identifiers have helped or not, and I tend to think they have helped.

Cheers,
Dave

On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Daniel Stenberg <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010, Adam Barth wrote:
>
>> Please don't add versioning to the protocol.  Versioning is a anti-pattern
>> for the web.
>
> We've seen this mentioned before on this list but without a lot of
> clarifications and I'm curious:
>
> What are the other transfer protocols for which versioning have failed so
> significantly that versioning in protocols can be called an anti-pattern?
>
> Or isn't it so that it truly is an anti-pattern for the *web* (with the
> emphasis added on the web word) and we're not really doing web here, we're
> discussing a transfer protocol.
>
> HTTP is the primary "web protocol" and AFAIK, its versioning is usually not
> considered a failure.
>
> --
>
>  / daniel.haxx.se
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