[AD] Question about versions

[Colin Ward <lists@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone.

You might remember me - I popped up on this list about a year ago as I was
porting Allegro to Amiga OS and I had the various silly questions you would
expect from someone just starting to port Allegro.  :-)  Well the project
got to 90% and stalled for a year due to work commitments and such things
(you know the story).  However, now I have the time to finish it off so I'm
back and am getting close to a first release.

However, I am terribly confused about the different versions available!

I originally based my port on 4.3 but went back to 4.2 because of some
problems with the Amiga's pthreads implementation.  My 4.2 version seems to
be able to compile and run any Allegro game that I can find on the
Internet, even very large and complex ones.  So that begs the question:

If 4.2 can run any Allegro game found on the Internet, what exactly is 4.3
and is it worth my while to upgrade to that once I have released 4.2?

Also, I will release Allegro as a shared library so will a game compiled
with 4.2 be able to run with 4.3 shared libraries and vice versa?  ie.  Are
they binary compatible?

Also, on the Allegro home page it is talking about the 4.3.10 release and it
says that it is the future 4.4 branch (fair enough) but that it is
"unrelated to the previous 4.3.0 and 4.3.1 releases."  What does that mean?
 It's very confusing!  I believe it was 4.3.1 that I originally ported
before going back to 4.2.1.

Then there is the 4.9.3 branch, which is the future 5.0 branch.  I have been
following the discussions on this on this mailing list and it is obviously
a rather large overhaul of the old 4.x branches (in all their flavours!). 
So can I ask what the rationale behind this is?  Will it have any downward
compatibility with 4.x for games written for 4.x?  I assume it is just an
API makeover given that the old 4.x API is quite old and has lots of
leftover legacy stuff from its DOS heritage?  After I release 4.2, what
benefits would I gain by migrating my port to 4.9/5.0?

Also, does the talk of Open GL support only apply to version 4.9?  Is there
any 4.9 targeted software written yet, besides demos?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.  :-)

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