[PD] consolidate backward- and MaxMSP compatibility in Cyclone (was: Purpose of Cyclone)

[Dan Wilcox]

Oh I know. It just seems a shame to say: "Well, somebody might have a patch somewhere from 10 years ago that relies on a 10 year old version of a library that mimics a 10 year old version  of Max running on a 10+ year old computer/os and we can't break that, ever."

For vanilla objects yeah, I get it, but for externals isn't it also reasonable able to say: "It's been 10 years maybe I might need to update that patch that uses that 10 year old external lib."

I'm not saying break things arbitrarily but, in the case of Max, they don't want to break people's patches either (and I bet there are more patches out in the wild than Pd patches). What has max changed object-wise between 4.6 & 7 that actually breaks things? I'd say very little and, if so, the whole argument is kind of moot so why not just introduce those non breaking changes made by Max?

If only we had someone who could extensively test, compare versions, and make notes about these differences. That would make not easy to see what might be a problem an what's easy to add. Oh wait, hasn't Alexandre been spending alot of time doing just that?

IE if an object historically had one output and and update adds another, how does that break old patches that only use 1 output?

enohp ym morf tnes
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Dan Wilcox
danomatika.com
robotcowboy.com

On Dec 23, 2015, at 4:29 AM, katja <katjavetter at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 4:44 AM, Dan Wilcox <danomatika at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What about versioning? If people *have* to have older compatibility, then
>> why can’t they just run an older version of cyclone? Newer development can
>> take place on the current version and you can clearly note api
>> changes/updates in a CHANGELOG. Say tag cyclone right now as version 1.0.0
>> and all further development is version 2.0.*
> 
> Versioning is important but it can't solve all issues that arise when
> diverging. While it is easy for a user to update to a specified
> version of a library with deken, Pd patches already out there 'in the
> wild' (to quote Jonathan) don't specify which version they need.
> 
> Katja