Documentation?

Behdad Esfahbod behdad at behdad.org
Thu Apr 9 12:36:43 PDT 2009


>> latest-releases tie-in on the web-page, that's problematic since it's
>> only the portion of the API which has been unchanging for an extended
>> period of time that would be (in the normal sense of the word) "stable".
> I guess one keeps something stable exactly because it wasn't at some
> point. I'd even call that normal. Future isn't a simple deduction of the
> past.

Exactly.  In most software projects "stable" means "we guarantee that we don't 
change it in future", not "see, we've not changed it in the past".

Cairo is both API and ABI stable.  Meaning, code compiled against all 
*supported* backends of any cairo *release* is going to work with all future 
releases of cairo with that backend compiled in.  Not source-compatible only, 
binary-compatible too.

Now, I emphasized "supported" because cairo has many unsupported backends. 
The cairo-xlib backend however, is supported, and is the most developed.  I 
also emphasized "releases".  We called developmental snapshots of the code, 
well, "snapshots".  Cairo releases are those with an even minor version, as in 
1.10.x.

Of course, one needs just to ask...

behdad




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