[development] How to port modules? was: Drupal 7 "When it's Ready"

[Earl Miles]

Paolo Mainardi wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 2:04 PM, Nathaniel Catchpole 
> <catch56 at googlemail.com <mailto:catch56 at googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>             Dries, also, said that releasing drupal 6 without
>             drupal.org <http://drupal.org> being updated to it was a
>             mistake he doesn't want to see happen again.
>
>
>         Why it's happen ? Because big missing, "Views, OG, Panels
>         etc...etc...", because backward compatibility API doesn't exists.
>
>
>     Views 2 (in Drupal 6) isn't compatable with Views 1 (in 5.x). A
>     'backwards compatability API' would have had zero effect, possibly
>     a negative effect on the Views upgrade process.
>
>
> My point is different, a backward compatibility API could run Views 
> 1.x on D > 5, this was the point.
>  
No, it can't.

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.

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. They would be a major burden, possibly MORE 
major than the effort of simply upgrading the modules to new APIs.