Speaker: Marc Mutz

Audience level: [Beginner | Intermediate | Advanced]

This talk is about BC (Binary Compatibility) in C++ user libraries.

What does BC mean? What's the difference between BC and SC (Source Compatibility)? Why would one want to maintain BC? What is forward and backwards BC? And, most importantly, what are the things you suddenly  cannot do anymore when you're under BC constraints?              

After setting these corner stones, we will discuss patterns that help maintain BC and that have evolved over the last decades in the KDE and  Qt projects.

Finally, after talking about the things you cannot do, we'll cheat and  do some of them nonetheless.