[Ns-developers] Requesting help for csma promiscuous mode

[Tom Henderson]

craigdo at ee.washington.edu wrote:

> 
> I want to point out that we seem to be operating in a mode where API changes
> are a non-issue.  That surprises me.


It is not a non-issue, but at issue also is the long-term integrity of 
what we are building.  Now that we are past 3.1 release, we are going to 
be faced with questions like this repeatedly.

I expect that in 3.2 release (and probably a few more), we will have to 
have release notes that call out a few changes; e.g.

"API changes from 3.1 to 3.2
============================
1. CsmaChannel::Send(); now takes an extra NetDevice parameter
2. ...
"

I would hope that this would decline in frequency with each release, as 
we get more and more usage.

I think the API stability we want in this project is stability that, 
first of all, doesn't cause subtle undetected errors when using the API 
across simulator versions, and second, doesn't present a serious 
impediment to upgrading and usability.  If someone's build breaks but 
the fix is easy and well documented, that doesn't concern me too much at 
this stage of ns-3 development.

What we are talking about in this case is probably going to be hidden 
from the bulk of users, so I think that possible API changes should be 
on the table for discussion.

Tom