[development] creating forward compatable modules?

[Syscrusher]

On Wednesday 23 November 2005 15:11, Tao Starbow wrote:
> I was 
> wondering if it is possible to create modules that will be compatible 
> with both 4.6 and 4.7?

This particular upgrade happens to have the new forms API, which is a clean
break with previous form-handling architecture, so although it's *possible* to
to this, with a lot of checking for functions existing or not, it's generally
not *practical* to do so. Easier to just create a clean copy of the module
then optimize for 4.7+.

In the past, though, multi-version modules haven't been too hard, at least
within a close range of versions. I have several contributed modules that
used the same code base for 4.5 and 4.6, with just a little conditional logic.
Of course, no one can say what will be the situation between 4.7 and 4.8. :-)

Drupal's philosophy seems to be one of treating database schemas and logic flow
patterns as "semi-solid" and the code itself as being largely "fluid". I think
that's one of the things I like about Drupal, because although it means some
recode work with each version, it also tends to keep out the cruft. If you have
application-specific functions that are independent of Drupal itself, you can
easily separate them into an "include" file that is shared across multiple
versions of your module.

Hope this helps.

Scott

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