Re: CREATEPROCESS Question

From: Richard Maine (nospam_at_see.signature)
Date: 12/29/03 

Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:05:03 -0800

"Gary L. Scott" <garyscottNOSPAM@ev1.net> writes:
> Jugoslav Dujic wrote:

>> Well, it is a little redundant, but that's the case with many apis --
>> once they decide to enhance capabilities, they usually have to add a
>> new function in order to maintain backward capability -- adding new
>> arguments is not an option....
>
> Maybe they should have used Fortran 90's optional keywords...that's the
> way GINO tends to add functionality to existing APIs.

Though this does help, note that it doesn't solve all of the world's
problems. If a new optional argument is added, the calling code tends
to need recompilation...and it likely really does need recompilation
or it won't work correctly, this isn't just a spurious recompile. No
source code changes should normally be needed except in rare special
cases (assuming it is a module procedure - but I recommend that anyway),
but you will need to recompile.

This means you need the source code...a bit of a problem with many
commercial applications.

It also means that you have to have sufficiently good configuration
control that you know what the current version of teh source code is
and you know how to sucessfully build the application from it. Of
course, this "should" be the case, but telling users that the
difficulty is their fault doesn't go over very well, even if it is
(perhaps partly) true. Thus when doing something like this, you
need to consider the user base and how much difficulty they are
likely to have. The more users you have, the bigger an issue it
will be. For an operating system API, it can be a pretty big one.

Though getting a bit off the original topic, I think this a
relevant issue for comp.lang.fortran - how adding optional
arguments to an API can impact applications. 

-- 
Richard Maine                       |  Good judgment comes from experience;
email: my first.last at org.domain  |  experience comes from bad judgment.
org: nasa, domain: gov              |        -- Mark Twain

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