[racket-dev] backwards incompatibility (was Re: `define-serializable-struct` and the `deserialize-info...` export)

(I think it is okay.)

But here's a chance for me to point out something I heard about in a
conversation with Satnam Singh at OOPSLA about how Google works that it
seems like would be a nice fit for us. Here's my adaptation to our world:
when you push out what some might consider a change that breaks clients
(like this one where you also hope to avoid a new package) you are obliged
to submit pull requests on all ring-0 packages to (at a min) get all test
cases to pass.

I guess you did that here, at least for the ring-0 packages in the racket
git repo, which is where the "I found ..." comment comes from?

Robby


On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:

> Currently, `(define-serializable-struct id ....)` expands to `(provide
> deserialize-info:id-v0)`. The `deserialize-info...` identifier needs to
> be exported to make things work, but the export is a hassle: the
> programmer doesn't care about it, it's not usually documented,
> re-exporting modules don't want to re-export it, and so on.
>
> I'm planning to change `define-serializable-struct` so that the export
> is put in a `deserialize-info` submodule, where it should cause less
> trouble. This is a slightly backward-incompatible change; I found a
> couple of modules that explicitly excluded `deserialize-info...` on
> import, and so those exclusions would have to be dropped.
>
> The change could also be backward-incompatible by changing the protocol
> for providers of deserialization other than `define-serializeable-struct`.
> That problem is easier to address: `deserialize` can try a
> `deserialze-info` submodule first, and if the export isn't found, then
> it can try the original module.
>
> Ok?
>
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