[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #8877: Add unique token check to protocol handshake

[Raymond Wagner]

  On 9/7/2010 21:36, Chris Adams wrote:
> I just want to not be denied the choice, and this patch denies me said
> choice, hence the complaint about the patch. You might think it
> doesn't, but I'm concerned about version skew and developer
> motivation. It denies me the choice because it prevents me using an
> up-to-date mythbackend with an up-to-date frontend (that happens to
> have a slightly out-of-date protocol implementation).

If it's an out-of-date protocol implementation, then it is by definition 
not up-to-date.  Protocol changes in the -fixes branches are few and far 
between.  All protocol and schema changes in the -fixes branch will be 
followed by a point release, meaning as long as you stick with one 
version of MythTV, you should never end up with incompatibility with 
your chosen frontend.  When you go to upgrade, you will just have to 
wait until your frontend has been upgraded to match.

This may be difficult to keep up with trunk, but of course trunk is 
development version, intended for development of MythTV, and 3rd party 
tools are of little to no concern at such time.

> And all that'll
> happen in the future is alternative clients will allow the token to be
> set in a config file and go right on using their old version logic.

That's a risk.  During a version check, the backend always returns its 
own version, and that's something that is necessary if 3rd party tools 
are to support multiple protocol versions.  At the very minimum, this 
forces someone to read through the code to find the new token on each 
change.  The hope is that this will provide sufficient incentive to 
actually see what the change was, and make sure it is not going to cause 
problems.