From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 26014 invoked by alias); 30 Dec 2014 11:07:31 -0000 Mailing-List: contact cygwin-xfree-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-xfree-owner@cygwin.com Reply-To: cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com Received: (qmail 26002 invoked by uid 89); 30 Dec 2014 11:07:30 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Virus-Found: No X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,SPF_PASS autolearn=ham version=3.3.2 X-HELO: selene.blankersfamily.com Received: from 87-161.ftth.onsbrabantnet.nl (HELO selene.blankersfamily.com) (88.159.161.87) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.93/v0.84-503-g423c35a) with ESMTP; Tue, 30 Dec 2014 11:07:29 +0000 Received: from gaia.blankersfamily.com (gaia.blankersfamily.com [172.30.0.103]) by selene.blankersfamily.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4E438CB for ; Tue, 30 Dec 2014 12:07:19 +0100 (CET) Received: from [192.168.0.2] (unknown [83.86.192.11]) by gaia.blankersfamily.com (Postfix) with ESMTPA id 0FD08E0 for ; Tue, 30 Dec 2014 12:07:19 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <54A28765.70401@blankersfamily.com> Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 11:07:00 -0000 From: Laurens Blankers User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.3.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com Subject: xinit-1.3.4-1: breaking backwards compatibility Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-IsSubscribed: yes X-SW-Source: 2014-12/txt/msg00060.txt.bz2 I noticed that updating to the latest xinit (1.3.4-1) from the previous one (1.3.2 I believe) completely breaks existing configurations. The changes have been mentioned in the release announcement: https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2014-11/msg00029.html And numerous posts have since reported bugs regarding these changes. For most a workaround has been provided, except for the 'icon in the taskbar' issue. I would like to express my wonder and dismay that such a seamingly minor version change includes functionality which completely and utterly breaks many, if not most, existing configurations. I am not sure what versioning strategy is being used for Cygwin/X but I would like to call attention to the semantic versioning standard (currently version 2.0.0): http://semver.org/ Signalling this major change by increasing the major version number of the xinit package (e.g. 2.0.0) would have made it a lot clearer what the impact of the change would have been. I would also like to call attending to the following FAQ item from the same website: Q: What do I do if I accidentally release a backwards incompatible change as a minor version? A: As soon as you realize that you've broken the Semantic Versioning spec, fix the problem and release a new minor version that corrects the problem and restores backwards compatibility. Even under this circumstance, it is unacceptable to modify versioned releases. If it's appropriate, document the offending version and inform your users of the problem so that they are aware of the offending version. I would like to kindly request that this change is reverted, at least until the time that a proper and documented upgrade path is available. Now please don't take this the wrong way. Although I realize some probably will. I do appreciate all the time that everyone, and not in the least Yaakov, invests into maintaining Cygwin/X. However as a user and software engineer myself I also very much appreciate systems continuing to function after minor upgrades. Sincerely, Laurens Blankers -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/