[LLVMdev] [RFC] Developer Policy for LLVM C API

[Philip Reames]

On 07/17/2015 03:41 PM, Eric Christopher wrote:
> Hi Juergen,
>
> I've actually got another, perhaps more radical, plan. Let's just get 
> rid of the C API or move it to another project. This simplifies a lot 
> of the plans here where people have too many different ideas of how 
> the C API should work.
>
> At this point the people who want a stable C API per incremental 
> version can do that and handle the overhead of porting themselves and 
> the people that want a C API that just happens to be a C interface can 
> have a wrapper (or SWIG or whatever they want).
>
> I realize it's radical, but it seems that there are so many different 
> wants for C API here that solving everyone's problems or wants is 
> going to be impossible.
I really haven't seen that much of a split here honestly.  Everyone 
agrees we need a stable C API for core functionality.  The only 
disagreement seems to be about when something gets promoted to "core" 
status and even that's been minimal.

(I have no opinion w.r.t. your actual proposal.)
>
> -eric
>
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 12:39 PM Juergen Ributzka <juergen at apple.com 
> <mailto:juergen at apple.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi @ll,
>
>     a few of us had recently a discussion about how to manage the C
>     API and possible policies regarding addition, maintenance,
>     deprecation, and removal of API.
>
>     Even thought there is a strong agreement in the community that we
>     shouldn't break released C API and should be backwards compatible,
>     there doesn’t seem to be a developer policy that backs that up.
>     This is something we should fix.
>
>     I was wondering what the interested parties think of the current
>     approach and what could/should we improve to make the use and
>     maintenance of the C API easier for users and the developers alike.
>
>     I was hoping we could also introduce a process that allows the
>     removal of an API after it has been deprecated for a whole release
>     and the release notes stated that it will be removed.
>
>     Thoughts? Comments?
>
>     Cheers,
>     Juergen
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