[Libpst-devel] More appointment fields added

[Chris Halls]

On Tuesday 09 January 2007 13:45, Joseph Nahmias wrote:
> OK.  I would think that we want the lib to be unversioned to start out
> with; the reasons for that are:
>
>   1) I'm not sure that the line is properly drawn between readpst and
>   libpst, ie. i'm not comfortable with the API yet.
>
>   2) I'm sure we'll come across some more fields as we go that will need
>   to be added -- changing the ABI.

By unversioned, I take it you are thinking of making a static library instead 
of a shared libpst.so.N?

I agree that your reasons above are valid reasons to consider not making a 
stable API yet. On the other hand, I wonder how quickly the API will change - 
not because it doesn't need changing, but because it needs someone with time 
to make changes. Also, having a shared library makes it harder for 
distributors if urgent updates are needed, because all the libpst users have 
to be rebuilt.

Maybe we should stay unversioned for now, but we should agree to look at this 
again soon and decide if we really have time to make a load of API changes, 
or whether we should just freeze the API as 'good enough for now'? I was 
fairly happy with the API for my changes. The only possible items I can think 
of are:

- Add some helpers for walking through folders and items - I implemented my 
own loop which could maybe go into an iterator-like API function.

- Clean up the debug stuff. I don't like having to work with a binary log file 
that needs a special tool, or that a lot of useful debugging info needed to 
fix bugs is not compiled in by default.

- Add Outlook 2003 support. It looks like we need someone other than Joseph or 
myself to do this one.

- Move some of the mail parsing logic into the API. For example, a function to 
get a valid attachment filename without having to know about short and long 
filenames as stored by Outlook.

Chris