[ubuntu-studio-devel] Backports

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 27 May 2016 13:46:20 -0700 (PDT), Len Ovens wrote:
>On Fri, 27 May 2016, lukefromdc at hushmail.com wrote:
>
>> In the case of Kdenlive, versions 15.08 and later use a different
>> file format. They can read an old project but cannot save back to
>> the old format, saving to the new and renaming the old one as a
>> backup. If the user deletes the backup, then reverts Kdenlive
>> versions 15.04 and earlier cannot open the file written by the later
>> version.  Fortunately Kdenlive will warn of that and tell the user
>> about the backup file,  
>
>Ardour 5.* will be the same (already is in GIT). Ardour 3 and 4 are 
>interchangable (with some oddities- 4.1 intruduces trim) 5 takes old 
>sessions ok but the reverse is not true, the old style is kept as a 
>snapshot.

Unfortunately editing the Ubuntu Wiki/help pages requires to subscribe
to a special group now, so I won't write such a page. However, the
information computer newbies need is very simple.

Major releases always should be backwards compatible and should be
without regressions, IOW 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 should be backwards-compatible.
From one major release to another no backwards-compatibility should be
expected.

IOW version numbers are not random numbers, they usually make sense.

A good exception is the kernel, it might not be backwards-compatible,
that's why rtirq needs fixes from time to time, but at least
regressions are unwanted for the kernel, sure, they sometimes happen,
especially for patched kernels.

A very bad exception are soname issues e.g. not long ago introduced by
GTK 3.20. The soname of a lib is the major version. Software is compiled
against the soname, which usually is a link against a dot release.

Regards,
Ralf