<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 5:23 AM, Earl Miles <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:merlin@logrus.com">merlin@logrus.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Paolo Mainardi wrote:<br>
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On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 2:04 PM, Nathaniel Catchpole <<a href="mailto:catch56@googlemail.com" target="_blank">catch56@googlemail.com</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:catch56@googlemail.com" target="_blank">catch56@googlemail.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
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Dries, also, said that releasing drupal 6 without<br></div>
<a href="http://drupal.org" target="_blank">drupal.org</a> <<a href="http://drupal.org" target="_blank">http://drupal.org</a>> being updated to it was a<div class="im"><br>
mistake he doesn't want to see happen again.<br>
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Why it's happen ? Because big missing, "Views, OG, Panels<br>
etc...etc...", because backward compatibility API doesn't exists.<br>
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Views 2 (in Drupal 6) isn't compatable with Views 1 (in 5.x). A<br>
'backwards compatability API' would have had zero effect, possibly<br>
a negative effect on the Views upgrade process.<br>
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My point is different, a backward compatibility API could run Views 1.x on D > 5, this was the point.<br>
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No, it can't.<br>
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Drupal changed entire sub systems. Not just how the functions are called but how the data is stored and what the data signatures are. A 'backwards compatibility API' would have required KEEPING data around that would cause the system to run slowly. The performance would be a nightmare. When going from version to version, one of the advantages is that we can throw away paradigms that are unsuccessful. A backwards compatibility API requires us to keep those paradigms.<br>
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Remember, an API is not just a bunch of function signatures. It is much, much deeper than that, and they would completely change the wya things have to be implemented.</blockquote><div><br>A good API could change the implementation without changing the signatures, they not are strictly related, it's not the only practices to do the things.<br>
<br>How is related from the data storage and API ? At API level, we don't do any assumption on how data is stored or how is the internal implementation, these are things to a lower (not API) level.<br><br>I think could be possible to write a sort of more abstract general API on top of existent for expose a bunch of general "services" with Drupal versions compatilibity in mind. Could be a plugin.<br>
<br></div></div>P.<br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Paolo Mainardi<br><br>Vice Presidente Assoc.ILDN (<a href="http://www.ildn.net">http://www.ildn.net</a>)<br>Blog: <a href="http://www.paolomainardi.com">http://www.paolomainardi.com</a><br>