Re: [albireo-dev] SWT version numbers

[Bruno Haible <haible@xxxxxxx>]

Gordon Hirsch wrote:
> In general I think it would be ideal to adopt the latest 3.4 milestone 
> as soon as possible, unless we agree there's something terribly wrong 
> with a particular milestone, from Albireo's point of view.

Most of our users are likely in 3.3 still. We don't test 3.3 regularly.
So if I continue to use 3.4M4 (a version before #216431 was fixed), I at
least contribute a little bit to increase the probability that Albireo
still runs on 3.3.

> Instead of the constants I defined for Eclipse version numbers, perhaps 
> it would be better to think in terms of ranges. Maybe we should add an  
> isSwtVersion() method that is sensitive to the ranges.
> 
> For example, Platform.isSwtVersion(Platform.SWT_34) returns true if the 
> version is >=3400 and < 3500.

I agree that we need to think in terms of ranges, preferably unbounded
ranges. I.e. never compare version numbers with ==, only < and >=. But
if we write Platform.isSwtVersion(Platform.SWT_34) we make the assumption
that things will be different in 3.5 than in 3.4 - which we cannot know
at this point. We cannot look into the future. So IMO the only valid
comparison is of the form

   Platform.SWT_VERSION < Platform.swtVersion(3, 412)

where the two numbers 3, 412 are known by looking at commits in the SWT CVS.

Bruno