Re: Why no more OCTAVE_API_VERSION_NUMBER?

[John W. Eaton]

On 01/02/2014 02:16 PM, Orion Poplawski wrote:
> On 01/01/2014 11:39 PM, John W. Eaton wrote:
> > On 12/30/2013 03:41 PM, Orion Poplawski wrote:
> > > This commit:
> > >
> > > changeset:   17510:7542f4496974
> > > user:        John W. Eaton <address@hidden>
> > > date:        Sat Sep 28 15:04:14 2013 -0400
> > > summary:     eliminate some macros in version.h
> > >
> > > Appears to have gotten rid of OCTAVE_API_VERSION_NUMBER from version.h.  It
> > > appears that at least swig uses this macro in #ifdefs to handle changes in the
> > > Octave api and this is breaking swig generated code for octave 3.8.0 (see
> > > https://sourceforge.net/p/swig/bugs/1353/).
> > >
> > > Is there a particular reason for this change?  Is there a better way to check
> > > API versions?  The text string OCTAVE_API_VERSION is a lot harder to parse.
> >
> > I removed it because it was no longer needed in Octave.
> >
> > jwe
>
> So:
>
> - Any chance of it being re-instated?
>
> - Is there a better/alternative way to check for version changes in the code?
>   Doing cpp #ifdef checks comparisons on strings is pretty difficult.

I recommend not using version numbers to decide which features are 
available and instead use a configure script that tests for the required 
features.

jwe