[Rubygems-developers] Another plug for Simon's patch

[David A. Black]

Hi --

On Thu, 1 Apr 2004, Jim Weirich wrote:

> David A. Black wrote:
> > [...] I think trying to impose a versioning policy, in the sense of
> > telling people which digits have to flip or not flip under what
> > circumstances, is about as likely to succeed as telling people they
> > can only create a gem if they use Emacs.  
> 
> I'm not against a versioning policy.  However, as I tend to have an 
> EnablingAttitude (http://martinfowler.com/bliki/EnablingAttitude) rather 
> than a DirectingAttitude 
> (http://martinfowler.com/bliki/EnablingAttitude), I would phrase the 
> policy as a suggestion and then point out the benefits of following the 
> policy (e.g. if you manage your versions in /this/ way, then users can 
> reliably use the version comparison tools in RubyGems to manage what 
> versions are used).  At that point I would let the individual developers 
> make their own choices.

There are a couple of levels here -- I guess I'd call it policy
vs. policing :-) Offering suggestions is fine (though I'm inclined to
keep it to a minimum myself), but my concern would be with (for
example) saying: we advise you to break your API only at certain
points because, while in theory it's up to you, the versioning tools
are hard-coded to think that's what you're going to do.  (Or words to
that effect.)


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack at wobblini.net