Dealing with compatibility issues.

Today I was searching for an Ubuntu app called Cuttlefish. But later found out that even though it was such an important utility it was no longer maintained. So, I googled ‘Cuttlefish ubuntu no longer maintained‘ and stumbled upon this AskUbuntu.com question…

How do I develop software for Ubuntu that one could still use in future versions

This question had a very thoughtful response, this point should be kept in mind while developing your projects…

In my experience (near 30 years now), hardware and low level code (BIOS for instance) change not that much or more accurately, keep a very good ascending compatibility. (I wrote twenty five years ago a little game program in assembler, running with DOS and VGA display: it’s still running fine on modern Windows computers).

So I would say: avoid dependencies as much as possible. When planning to use a library or an API, examine thoroughly its history and evolution, and how it still run “obsolete” code or not. If you’re in doubt, try to incorporate to your project the source code (and not the compiled library). If the functionalities it provides is not strictly computer oriented (like maths libs or general algorithms), you probably need not upgrades.

Just my two cents…

Find the whole story here : Ask Ubuntu

And as always:

Make it Open Source! That way anyone can jump in and maintain, fix, whatever, when for whatever reason you just can’t anymore, although this can happen due to basic operability (stares at air apps…) some apps just need an extra hit with a hammer to keep them working.