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

[Paolo Mainardi]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 5:23 AM, Earl Miles <merlin at logrus.com> wrote:

> 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.


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.

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.

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.

P.


-- 
Paolo Mainardi

Vice Presidente Assoc.ILDN (http://www.ildn.net)
Blog: http://www.paolomainardi.com
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