The looming Python 3(000) monster

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 10:18:18AM -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Richard W.M. Jones (rjones at redhat.com) said: 
> > ... Or take the opportunity to jump to a safe language .. we've
> > already got an OCaml cross-compiler.
> 
> Yes, let's move to something 'safer', which doesn't have ABI compatibility
> ANYWHERE. That makes perfect sense.

You can get the same illusion of ABI compatibility as in C by simply
wrapping your OCaml library in a C wrapper and publishing the C header
file as the ABI.  I even wrote a tool to do this automatically.  Real
ABI compatibility is a tricky problem that only works in very limited
cases (eg. you extend the interface with new functions and never
modify even the internals of existing functions).

Rich.