"binding surfaces" (was: gcc source management requirements)

[Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org>]

On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 03:04:52AM -0500, Jim Blandy wrote:
>...
> And generally structuring Subversion as a bunch of libraries was, at
> least in part, another attempt to increase its hackability: since
> there are a bunch of internal interfaces designed carefully enough
> that one can learn and use them, people have a lot more options for
> where to plug new and weird stuff in.  If you understand Subversion's
> 'editors', you can go a long way.

A friend of mine referred to this as "having binding surfaces" (as in the
chemistry term). There are all kinds of ways that people can write stuff
that binds to SVN. He credits the Apache web server's success as due to its
large number of binding surfaces, and I tend to agree. The Apache web server
isn't the fastest, isn't the best-architected, but hoo boy... it can do just
about everything if you plug in the right modules. And *that* makes it
successful.

I see the same thing for Subversion, and it is also why I care so much about
the SWIG bindings. Not only can you use the libraries to do all kinds of
cool stuff, you can now do it with your favorite language. The tool/examples
directory has got a lot of stuff that demonstrates how to quickly get neato
functionality going with minimal investment.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/

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