2008.12.21 16:10 "Re: [Tiff] 3.9.0 release", by Jay Berkenbilt

In case anyone is interested, there are a small handful of tests that
I run to verify ABI compatibility, and I'll share them with the list.

* Run diff -uw on all the public header files:

tiff.h
tiffconf.h
tiffio.h
tiffvers.h
tiffio.hxx

to make sure there were no changes to structures or function
arguments. Addition of new interfaces are okay, but changes to or
removals of old interfaces are not. Changes to structures are not
okay. Changes like replacing one type with another type of the
same size are fine. For example, this change is innocuous.

-typedef uint32 tstrip_t;       /* strip number */
-typedef uint32 ttile_t;        /* tile number */
+typedef uint32 tstrile_t;       /* strip or tile number */
+typedef tstrile_t tstrip_t;     /* strip number */
+typedef tstrile_t ttile_t;      /* tile number */

• Run diff -uw on tif_dirinfo.c and carefully check any changes to the tiffFieldInfo table. Additions of new entries are fine, but changes to old entries are not. Changes here constitute ABI changes since they change the interpretation of arguments to TIFFSetField and TIFFGetField.
• Run several applications against all the images in tiff-samples compiled with an older version and run with a newer version of the shared library. I use at least display from imagemagick, gthumb from gnome, tiffgt from the tiff distribution, and sometimes other things. I make sure to try applications that read the tiff files in various ways. Lots of the gnome programs use the RGBA interfaces while some of the others use scanline-based functions.
• I also run make check, but the test suite is extremely minimal right
• now, so I don't put too much value in it yet.

--Jay

--
Jay Berkenbilt <ejb@ql.org>