Unify libb2 and the main blake2 repo? about blake2

[willbryant]

If it's just the simple API left that can't be solved by bumping soversion, I suggest... breaking both versions!

Seriously. Since the risk is not so much that it will break some compiles but that it won't break some compiles, it might be best to change the signature in such a way that it will break it - for everyone. Something as simple as renaming the function would work.

We could even add a #define to get back one of the two old syntaxes, so people who just need to keep compiling older sources against a newer release of the library can just add that define to restore compatibility.

[sneves]

I've thought about this for quite a while, and I agree with you. The only thing libb2 brings to the table, really, is the packaging and the dynamic dispatch for x86.

However, merging libb2 and the main repo would require a major API change (the main repo's API has changed since libb2 became its own thing), which might possibly break existing applications. I don't really know if anything serious uses libb2.

[julian-klode]

AFAICT, the API is the same (function argument count, struct names, field names, etc), just the ABI differs (mostly different integer types, maybe some re-ordering). So it's just an issue of bumbing the soversion, or well, that libtool version thing appropriately; and then rebuilding clients. Stuff like that happens all the time, so no biggie.

[QuLogic]

The only thing libb2 brings to the table, really, is the packaging

This is very very useful for downstream distributions.

However, merging libb2 and the main repo would require a major API change (the main repo's API has changed since libb2 became its own thing), which might possibly break existing applications. I don't really know if anything serious uses libb2.

The ABI change is a big problem, but libb2 has bumped the soversion in the latest release, so everyone would need to rebuild if they were using it. The most annoying thing is that the simple API passes pointers and lengths in a different order, so all you get is warnings about pointer-int conversion. Distros are starting to package libb2 and likely would want to unbundle any other users, so this is a major pain point if upstreams want to continue bundling (which they originally got from blake2) but still support building against a system copy (which is libb2).