Libraries' obsolescence

Hi all,

recently a couple of forum's fellows pointed me out that one of my old libraries began to show a singular error when used with a recent release of B4A.

The error reported was:
"java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: anywheresoftware.b4a.objects.ListViewWrapper.AddTwoLinesAndBitmap2"

No doubt it was due to some recent change in B4A (CharSequence, I guess) and, in fact, just recompiling with latest B4A release solved it. But that made me think.

At any time old dependable code could become unusable due to advances in our beloved developing tool. That means, when using others' libraries, to cross our fingers and hope for the author to update its copy of B4A and then to recompile/update his library or that he/she releases the source code to give us the opportunity to still use those old libraries in the new enviroment.

Another option could be not to use third-party libraries, but it will be too limiting in my opinion.

Maybe we should begin to explicitly note which version of B4A we used to compile a given version of our library. What do you think?

udg

It is always better to share the source code of B4X written libraries.

Changes such as the change from String to CharSequence are rare and in most cases they do not break existing libraries as the older methods are kept with the @Hide annotation.

I have already reported this difficulty with the B4A version 7 by inserting the Resumable SUB. Some 6.80 compiled libraries no longer worked on version 7.
Unfortunately, you can not test and possibly recompile at all times. I'm continuing to develop with the 6.5 that seems compatible with most versions. Some libraries I had to make 2 different compilations for those who have 7.0+ or 6.80.