[sane-devel] question about next SANE release

[stef]

	Hello,

	there have been a few inconclusive threads on the next release of SANE. I'd 
really wish that a decision could be taken so we can make a release in not a 
distant future.

	If the current CVS is released as SANE 1.1, what would be the extent of the 
changes ? 
	- only the rts8891 backend uses the new SANE_STATUS_WARMING_UP.
	- only the canon_dr, fujitsu, coolscan3 and bh backends uses the new frame 
          formats
	 In the case someone installs the latest release without any care, there will 
be no damages, and only -in some cases- the rts8891 backend could not be 
used. In even rarer circumstances, if a new frame format is required, the scan 
will fail. That's not that much.
	Furthermore, someone working properly would read the release notes and be 
informed of the changes. By shipping a compatibility meta backend, we will be 
able to allow the safe use of the updated backends with not yet updated 
frontends. Once SANE  is released, the frontends coders will take notice and 
will update at their own pace. There is already code in scanimage and 
xscanimage which handles the new features that can be use as an example.
	Due to the way the changes have been made in SANE, any existing backend (be 
it out of tree or binary only) will still work as expected without being 
touch at all.
	So I really think we should carry on the initial plan, and release it as SANE 
1.1 . It brings needed new features with very limited impact on frontends, 
and no impact at all on external backends.

	If there are serious enough reasons to raise the version to SANE 2, we can 
still manage it through a compatibility meta backend and modifications in 
dll.c to load existing binary backends along with the SANE 2 ones.

	In any case there can't be new features without any impacts of some sort, and 
we have the tools to mitigate them. 

Regard,
	Stef