From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2004-11-17T21:16:34+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] rpa-base 0.2.3

On Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 02:08:23PM +0900, Matt Armstrong wrote:
> > rpa-base 0.2.3 is now available at http://rpa-base.rubyforge.org . 
> 
> I just noticed that RubyMail is part of RPA -- pretty neat!  :-)

Would you like to receive notifications of future package revisions?

> I am planning to release a new major version of RubyMail that is
> completely incompatible with prior versions.  While the package name
> will still be RubyMail, the libs will be in 'rubymail/*' instead of
> 'rmail/*'.  I have noticed that the library path location 'rmail' has
> caused packages to call their packages 'rmail', makes it hard for me
> to actually identify them as being RubyMail.

mmm yes, I can see librmail-ruby1.{6,8} in Debian...

> One advantage of this is that both old and new versions of rubymail
> will be able to co-exist.
> 
> Will this totally screw RPA? 

I hope not :)

Since your new major version is going to be completely incompatible with
the previous ones, I think it would make sense to do the equivalent to a
soname change, that is, something like
  require 'rubymail'    ==>   require 'rubymail1'
The port/package name would be rubymail1; in time, the current rubymail
port/package, corresponding to 0.17, could be renamed to rubymail0.

The major number (of the API) actually belongs to the name of the
library, in a way, and the 'soname change' is less invasive than a
versioned require, and nicer to third party port/package systems (think
of Debian for instance).

-- 
Hassle-free packages for Ruby?
RPA is available from http://www.rubyarchive.org/