[fpc-devel] Proof of Concept ARC implementation

[Sven Barth]

On 28.10.2014 09:57, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> Sven Barth schrieb:
>> Am 27.10.2014 21:00, schrieb Hans-Peter Diettrich:
>>> Sven Barth schrieb:
>>>> Am 27.10.2014 17:20 schrieb "Hans-Peter Diettrich"
>>>> <DrDiettrich1 at aol.com <mailto:DrDiettrich1 at aol.com>>:
>>>
>>>>  > Something like ShortString and AnsiString?
>>>>
>>>> With the difference that Short- and AnsiString are assignable to
>>>> eachother while Jonas does not want that for reference counted and
>>>> ordinary classes.
>>>
>>> Where would this matter? When TObject and TManagedObject are
>>> different (base) types, a direct assignment of references is impossible.
>> Take unit Typinfo for example where quite some methods take a TObject
>> instance.
>
> The TypInfo methods can determine the exact type of their arguments, and
> act inside accordingly.

If you have a method X that takes a TObject parameter how do you plan to 
pass it a reference counted object when these and TObject are not 
compatible *at compiletime*?

> IMO Delphi versions don't offer backwards compatibility for good
> reasons, instead a purchased licencse allows to *also* use all older
> versions, down to D7. What I'm missing here are bugfixes, because the
> development of older versions is almost stopped as soon as a new version
> is distributed. Known bugs are mostly fixed only in newer versions,
> which introduce new bugs and features at the same time - good for sales
> but bad for the customers. Since FPC/Lazarus are open source, user
> groups may offer continued support for their preferred version(s), by
> backporting bugfixes into these versions.

We are not Embarcadero. We don't get money for providing FPC, we do it 
for free. And we aren't a big team like Mozilla (who get paid anyway, so 
back to square one). So it's natural that we're going to choose the 
route with the least maintenance burden, but the most compatibility (and 
providing long term supported releases *is* a burden). It's not easy to 
find this compromise, but we're trying...

Regards,
Sven