Re: [AD] Question about versions

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On 2008-08-23, Colin Ward <lists@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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.

Great!

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

That's understandable.

> 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?

4.3 is, roughly, 4.2 with some addons (mainly AllegroGL) in the same
package.  It's meant to reduce installation hassles, pretty much.

> 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?

No.

> 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.

What we now call "4.9" used to be called "4.3".  For these two cases,
just pretend that:

    4.3.0 --> 4.9.0
    4.3.1 --> 4.9.1

> 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?

The difference between 4.2 and 4.9 is vast; it's basically a new
library.  We could have called it something else, and maybe we should
have.  It's only when you look at the code and see that much of the new
code is based on the old code that you'll have a point of comparison.

We did (and do) intend to have a compatibility layer so that programs
written for 4.2 could be compiled with 5.0, with minor changes.
Currently that layer doesn't exist, and since this is being done by
hobbyists, it might never exist.

> 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?

Not that I know of.

Peter





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