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

[Jim Grosbach]

This is interesting. If we did this, the same would apply to the other language bindings, too, yes? We’d end up with a few different mini-projects (or possibly just one w/ a configurable build system).

It would also set the stage for, potentially, multiple sets of bindings. As Eric points out, one size doesn’t always fit all, and our current path of trying to find some sort of happy medium may not be the best. This would allow us to have one, or more, binding set which map to different use cases appropriately.

So long as we set things up in a way that makes it easy to configure both a unified and discrete (in tree vs. using a “make install” artifact) build, had good bot coverage, etc, etc, I think this could work really well.


That said, it’s also a bit of a derail from and most orthogonal to Juergen’s main topic. Perhaps we should split this off to a different thread?

-Jim

> On Jul 17, 2015, at 3:41 PM, Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail.com> 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.
> 
> -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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