[ZOOKEEPER-296] adopt APR-style versioning and compatibility guidelines for C API

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: c client
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Chris Darroch
• Created: 05/Feb/09 19:55
• Updated: 05/Feb/09 19:55

Description

Per a recent discussion on the ZooKeeper users mailing list regarding the API/ABI change introduced in 3.1.0 by ZOOKEEPER-255, I would suggest going forwards that the project adopt the versioning and compatibility guidelines of the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) project. These are well documented here:

http://apr.apache.org/versioning.html

I'd also suggest adopting the parallel installation procedure used by APR. This would mean that, for example, as of version 4.0.0 the ZooKeeper C library would be installed as libzookeeper_mt-4.so and the include files would be installed as zookeeper-4/zookeeper.h, etc.

The namespace cleanup I suggest in ZOOKEEPER-295 would fit well with such a change.

I should also point out the (rather mysterious) intent of the GNU libtool versioning system for libraries; while many projects seem to disregard it, it does have some value:

http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/html_node/Libtool-versioning.html