try porting a modern Pike 7.4 program to Pike 0.5 or even 0.6).
That's forward compatibility to me, and that's something I merrily ignore in all circumstances with the single exception of the format in encode_value strings.
I consider all backward compatibility problems since the introduction of #pike to be bugs. (Of course, there's always the question whether a certain change is a compatibility issue or merely a bugfix.)
/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS
Previous text:
2003-01-06 23:45: Subject: Re: Inconsistency.
Well, it would make sense to people. We have Emacs 18, 19, 20 and 21. Everyone knows that it's in essence the same program but that something written for 21 won't work in 19 (most lilely) and quite possibly the other way around. Ditty with Perl 4 and Perl 5 - I don't know perl but afaik those have many incompatibilites.
Also, it's really not different from what we already have - Pike 0.5, 0.6, 7.0, 7.2, 7.4 - they are often very incompatible (especially backwards - try porting a modern Pike 7.4 program to Pike 0.5 or even 0.6).
Just because we are considered "stable" (which one can argue pike 0.5 and 0.6 were not I guess), doesn't mean we can't change.
/ David Hedbor