From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2004-11-18T05:29:46+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] rpa-base 0.2.3


On Nov 17, 2004, at 8:47 AM, Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote:

>> Surely having a package/program/library name and a
>> version number as separate things is not only more aesthetically
>   ==============
> It's not primarily about the version number itself but about an API
> declaration.
>
> Since the new RubyMail will have a completely incompatible API, it is
> de facto another library -- and no longer the original "RubyMail", 
> hence
> the possible need for another name. RubyMail2 shows its heritage.

I disagree completely. Every time I extend a class or change the 
semantics of a method I'm making an "incompatible API". That is just 
part of writing code. I'm not going to change the package name every 
time I make an incompatible release. I'd be up to ZenWeb211 and 
RubyInline39 by now. Despite all those incompatible releases, I haven't 
gotten any complaints about my package names being misleading.

Further, I put VERSION in all of my main modules / classes in order to 
allow testing against to determine levels of compatibility.

The only reason I see really needing to change the package name is if 
you wanted to have multiple versions installed at the same time and 
usable potentially by the same morass of dependencies. Having 3 
separate versions of libtool, 2 of autoconf, and 2 of automake on my 
freebsd boxen is more than frustrating. I'd rather not have that spread 
into ruby.

>> David (who intends to keep calling Ruby Ruby, whatever its version :-)
>
> Unless when referring to Ruby 2 I guess...

Your quips (sprinkled throughout the entire email) not do not help your 
position and are not appreciated.