Fear of losing libraries due to Android updates

[KMatle]

As you all I use some libs from users here in the forum. Android is upgrading to 6 and I'm not sure all libraries will work then which might be very critical for some developers.

I appreciate the free work of the developers and I'm very thankful but there is no guaranty that there will be updates. So there's this fear of losing important libraries (f.e. Android 6). Of course I would pay for them but then I would expect continuity & updates.

What is your opinion about it?

 

[stevel05]

I'm not sure that I understand your concern here, a new release of Android OS won't change existing functionality in older OS versions. If they change the way they want something to work significantly in the new version, they will deprecate the functionality in the API, this doesn't automatically mean that it will no longer work even in the new version, it usually just means that developers should now use the new approach, and it 'may' be removed at some later date.

It's possible that there have been exceptions to this, but I am sure that they won't break existing functionality without very good reason. And I'm sure that the community would very quickly become aware of it.

If you are talking about libraries that perform a specific purpose being upgraded to take advantage of new functions that may become available, then that is a different issue. You are right, existing libraries may not be updated to encompass this, but it is highly unlikely that they will stop working overnight.

Have you heard of any specific instances where this may happen?

 

[asales]

This is my opinion:

The "Facebook SDK Wrapper + Native Facebook LoginButton" (https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/facebook-sdk-wrapper-native-facebook-loginbutton.42341/) is a excelent library, but Periklis Koutsogiannis don't answer anymore and without no source code is difficult to other user make changes in library.

I think that if the library is not commercial, a source code will be welcome and other users could be help, if the author don't provide support anymore.

 

[sorex]

I can understand the fear.

There are already "tons" of libraries made by people who are either

not using B4A anymore
not responding
not able or not willing to update a library to the current version

I don't know how this wrapping is done but I guess it's too complex to go through the process every time a library gets updates.