ABI Backward Compatibility

Hey C++ developers of Panda3D,
I’ve just checked in a fix to the codebase that should give minor releases a backward compatible ABI. This means that if you link something against the Panda3D 1.8.0 libraries, you’ll still be able to use it with libraries of any Panda3D 1.8.X release. This rule was created to make C++ users able to use the web plugin functionality.
To the people working directly on the Panda3D codebase: do not merge anything onto the release branch (e.g. panda3d_1_7_branch) that is not backward ABI compatible. You can merge in new symbols, but you cannot merge altered or removed symbols. This rule does not apply to the trunk – you can do whatever you want on the trunk as there are ABI rules there. Of course, these rules don’t affect Python code; just exposed C/C++ symbols.
But you really don’t need to worry about any of this unless you actually want to merge things onto the release branch – and this is usually done by the release maintainer anyways.
As for linking to libraries on non-Windows systems: libraries like libpanda.so / libpanda.dylib will now symlink to libpanda.so.1.7 / libpanda.1.7.dylib. This ensures that if you link to libpanda, it will link against the 1.7 version of the library and won’t conflict with libraries of any other series. This allows you to have multiple series of Panda3D installed at the same time and run different games that are linked against different series of Panda.
The latest buildbot releases should already abide by these rules. I’m going to put up a buildbot script soon that regularly builds the release branch and alerts when the ABI compatibility is broken. (E-mail me if you want to be put on the buildbot e-mail notify list.) The next release, 1.7.1, will start being ABI compatible.
Have fun!