[development] RFC: drupal as a moving target

[Earl Miles]

Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
> Maybe we could introduce a code of conduct for contrib authors to not
> do major overhauls when a new version is due. Ie if I maintain a
> module for D6 and D7 comes out, I port it straight away to a D7-1
> version and then start a rewrite as D7-2.

The problem is, I am completely changing the API, and it seemed like it 
would, in the end, be easier on the end users to deal with the API 
change at the same time that they have to update their sites and modules 
anyway. I didn't want to try and support both APIs in the same version, 
because they are so drastically different, and NOT supporting both in 
the same core version would mean all Views 1 API modules would totally 
break with Views 2 installed and that would be unacceptable.

Believe me, the consequences for going the other direction are far, far 
worse. This is why I forcefully nixed a couple of efforts to port Views 
1 to D6; I simply do not want to deal with trying to support both APIs 
simultaneously. Users would suffer for it, and so would I.

This would've gone faster if I'd had more of the community rallying, but 
alas, I think a lot of the community rally cred got spent when dmitrig01 
made his ill-timed "Views needs your help" post and then I was unable to 
accept it.