[fpc-pascal]Interface-only units (was: shared libraries interface)

[Jonas Maebe]

On Fri, 2 Aug 2002, Full_Name wrote:

> > No, it's mainly to guarantee portability between different compiler
> > versions.
>
> But the interface is still to be thought of as 'read only' ?

It's a simple text file, so you can't prevent someone from changing it.

> Otherwise, it
> would be possible to alter the interface... not good for maintenance.

I don't see how you could prevent that.

[snip]
> If I had written code internally well, hopefully not too much would break, but
> I still think this is dangerous. This is one reason why the DCU/TPU concept
> arrived in the first place.

We have ppu's which serve a similar purpose. The problem is that they
aren't always portable across different compiler versions, hence the pure
interface units (which can then be compiled to ppu files by the people
that want to use the unit, without needing access to the implementation).
Of course, the solution that Michael proposed in his mail also works...


Jonas