Re: re-use of version URL's

   From: Greg Stein <gstein@lyra.org>

   > > Version resource URLs can be unique and persistent
   > 
   > I agree; they can.  But, must they?

   For the highest level of interoperability... you bet.

   A MUST means the client can actually rely on the feature. If you drop that
   to a SHOULD, then the client needs to (effectively) ignore the thing and
   find an alternate solution.

I believe that Greg's description of the relative value of MUST and
SHOULD is exactly right.

Currently, there is only one SHOULD in the versioning protocol, and
that is for whether or not label comparison is case sensitive.  We
only let that in after long and arduous attempts to resolve it failed.
At least labeling is an optional feature that is orthogonal to the
rest of the protocol.  I believe that having a SHOULD in a core
feature like a version URL would be a much more significant loss.

Cheers,
Geoff

Received on Thursday, 4 January 2001 17:19:22 UTC