[GiNaC-list] Re: GiNaC 1.3.1

[Richard B. Kreckel]

Dear Chris,

On Mon, 9 May 2005, Chris Dams wrote:
> On Mon, 9 May 2005, Jens Vollinga wrote:
>
> > But seriously, I thought you and Richie solved that issue more or less?
>
> Well, I submitted a patch that solved the issue. This patch was only
> partly applied. Actually, only the code-beautifying part of it was applied
> and this change may, depending on the compiler, not even generate a
> different *.so file.
>
> The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, my patch breaks binary
> compatibility. Secondly, Richy was not certain whether he liked that my
> patch throws all references to flyweights out of the library and only
> keeps flyweights as numeric*'s and as ex-es. Of course it is quite
> possible to make a five-or-so-line class that emulates the behaviour of
> references and initializes in a safe way. On the other hand, that would
> probably still break binary compatibility. Or maybe not, as I showed in a
> private mail, but that results is some dirty hacking, that could possibly
> break things for some people.
>
> Since Richy is apparently still thinking about what would be best, I am
> not sure what is going to be done.

Actually, I'm not.  Sorry if I gave the impression.

As you notice, this binary compatibilty issue makes your patch eligible
for GiNaC 1.4.0 at best.  If your patch solves a real problem, then we
should reconsider it.  But my impression was that it only solved a
theoretical problem that no user of the library could possibly hit.
Wrong?

Regards
  -richy.
-- 
Richard B. Kreckel
<http://www.ginac.de/~kreckel/>
k