portable runtime

[allison]

Decide if we should provide a portable runtime somewhat similar to APR ( http://apr.apache.org/).

[jkeenan]

This ticket asks us to make a decision. Can we do so now? If not, at what point in the future will we be able to do so?

My feeling is that a very long-term TODO like this (or like TT #613 or TT #614) belongs on a wiki page somewhere, not in the ticketing system.

BTW, here's what's posted on the link Allison provided:

The mission of the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) project is 
to create and maintain software libraries that provide a 
predictable and consistent interface to underlying 
platform-specific implementations. The primary goal is to 
provide an API to which software developers may code and 
be assured of predictable if not identical behaviour 
regardless of the platform on which their software is built, 
relieving them of the need to code special-case conditions 
to work around or take advantage of platform-specific 
deficiencies or features.

Thank you very much.

kid51

[bacek]

-1 from me to implement such thing. There is no point to do it.

-- Bacek

[whiteknight]

We do have a defined embedding API which appears to be pretty stable already. Time will tell whether or not we can keep it stable for long. We do need to overhaul our extending API too, but that's a project for a later time.

I'm with bacek, I don't think there is any benefit to us creating either another API, or attempting to modify our existing APIs to meet some vague compatibility concerns. I'm going to close this ticket now. If we have specific issues involving problems (functional or compatibility) with our existing APIs we can open specific tickets to address them.