binary compatibility ABI (was: Re: [boehm-gc] Import 6.3 alpha 1)

[Bryce McKinlay]

On Thursday, Aug 14, 2003, at 07:08 Pacific/Auckland, Andrew Haley 
wrote:

> I'm working on this ABI.  It ocurred to me that I didn't really know
> exacltly what binary compatibility meant, and so I studied Chapter 13
> and used it to write some test cases to see how well we're doing.
>
> It was a very boring job, and took far longer than I expected.
> However, I now have the test cases, and can report that we do:

...

> Two questions:
>
> 1.  Are there any cases I've missed?

How about things like if a class or method is removed, making sure that 
errors are deferred till the point in the program where that class or 
method is actively used? And making sure the right exceptions are 
thrown when this happens. --indirect-dispatch may not be complete in 
this area yet.

> 2.  Are these results as expected?

Looks right to me. I seem to remember there are some cases with 
interfaces that --indirect-dispatch doesn't yet handle. I don't 
remember the details right now though...

Regards

Bryce.