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The future
Allegro has evolved into something fairly big, really nice and extremely useful,
and some dust has now settled since version 4.0 was released. The library has
thus reached that point where every little addition or modification may have
side effects on the whole library: now that we have gone multi-platform, it's
not so easy to add features which are available everywhere.
Experience has shown that there are some design mistakes which conflict with
existing libraries or just that the current API could be improved if it were
rewritten. However, this would mean that old Allegro code would not compile
with newer versions, which is a bad thing no matter how many
programmers you find eager to update their code at every library version.
But a line has been drawn and most of Allegro's developers have agreed that
sooner or later backwards compatibility would be dropped, at least once. And
here we are planning what the new API should look like. As a user programmer,
you now have a chance to improve Allegro, by suggesting what could be improved,
changed, fixed, by saying where you had the most problems with the current API,
etc. Isn't this a wonderful chance to say what you really hated about Allegro
(not that there is much to hate but still...), and what desperately
needs to be changed?
To keep track of all progress in the discussion, a directory
has been created at http://alleg.sourceforge.net/future/info.html (there's a cache at
http://sunsite.dk/allegro/future/info.html), with the purpose of keeping all important
documents and design decisions, and to prepare them for the
actual day when a new Allegro will be written. Allegro developers
registered at SourceForge have access to this directory and will
put new documents there from time to time.
For user land discussion, you can use Allegro.cc's forum, where you
can freely post your thoughts, after a short online registration.
There's also a mailing list
at SourceForge, where you can browse the archives and collaborate
actively. So go ahead and make a difference. Remember,
however, that if you want your proposal to appear in
the directory above, you will have to format it in plain
text format and send it to one of the Allegro's developers
(here's a list of them).
Here you have an example on how to
format your proposal.
Finally, for those who might be afraid to use Allegro now because of all this
talk of major changes in the future: we know that there are many, many
programs written with versions 2.x, 3.x and 4.x, and we don't want them to
go to waste either. Therefore we are planning to keep Allegro 4.0 compiling
and to keep bug fixing it for as long as possible. If the new API turns out
to be not so drastically different from the current one, we may provide an
easy migration path.
Of course, development of Allegro 5 has already started. You
can see the proposed roadmap and follow its execution here: http://alleg.sourceforge.net/future/development_roadmap.txt.
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