[development] Freezing the Drupal API

[Dries Buytaert]

Richard,

On 15 May 2006, at 22:57, Richard Archer wrote:
> Recent discussions on the Consultants list has raised the issue of
> the cost of doing business using Drupal, notably the high cost of
> upgrading existing installations due to the ever-changing nature
> of Drupal's API.
>
> I wonder if there would be any interest in forming a group to
> tackle this by identifying where the current API has potential
> for improvement and perhaps even writing some code!

re-thinking some of Drupal's APIs is a good thing.  If that makes  
them more consistent, and less likely to change in future, that is  
great.
I happily accept patches that clean up the APIs.  However, I can't  
promise that they won't change because we won't officially freeze  
them.  In practice, however, APIs might end up being frozen because  
there is no longer a need to change them.  APIs evolve and mature  
too.  The pager API, to name just one example, hasn't changed in 1-2  
years.

If you think you can help them mature in a clean and consistent  
manner, that is great.  But, the focus should be to clean up APIs,  
not to freeze them.  In pratice, a good API might eventually freeze  
itself.

--
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/