[OpenLayers-Dev] 2.10 and 2.11-RC1 OpenLayers.Class behavior changes

[christopher.schmidt at nokia.com]

On Jul 24, 2011, at 4:07 PM, ext Schuyler Erle wrote:

> 
> On Jul 24, 2011, at 4:43 AM, RICHARD Didier wrote:
> 
>> With 2.10, overloading constructors was as simple as overwriting the
>> initialize prototype :
>> 
>> X.prototype.initialize= function () { ...}
>> 
>> In 2.11-RC1, it breaks as the new prototype is not the constructor !
>> ...
>> 
>> BTW, as this new OpenLayers.Class is a major change in OpenLayers, don't
>> you thing it is more a 3.0 feature than a 2.x ?
> 
> I confess I'm a little concerned about this... Are we breaking backwards compatibility with such a change?

I would argue that this is something that we have never actively 
supported, documented, or encouraged in any of our code, examples,
etc.

While there will always be some changes to be made that will break backwards
compatibility with some applications, I do not think that it is the
case that we have to ensure that all possible things that users can
do with the library are supported in exactly the same way forever:
that's simply a way to hamstring ourselves, discouraging all forward
progress.

I do think that this is worth a resolution into a release note of some
kind identifying that if people are doing these kinds of prototype
overrides in their applications, what the supported way to do so is in
2.11; other than that, I do not think that we have a responsibility to
encourage that all applications written will work with each new OpenLayers
revision.

Richard,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention; I will make sure that this
is noted in the Release notes.

-- Chris