I once came across a quote comparing Linux to living with architects who are continually building new additions to your house. You wake up expecting your living room to be exactly where it was when you went to bed only to find it replaced with some other design and so it goes. Problems like deprecation and incremental changes in design are not always seen in terms of communication, but think about it this way. How exactly do we find out that the underlying plans have been changed? Usually when a feature breaks. Either via a warning message in the system log, or some note on some forum somewhere after you've already tried to hack your way around the problem.
Since Linux Code is constantly being revised, and we not all working on exactly the same part of the system (Do we all have to be constantly glued to the monitors of those who make such decisions?), it strikes me that there could be a solution.
Supposing instead of using [code] as the way of tagging code in a general way on blogs for instance, we had a system like this:
[code lucid] [/code lucid]
Then when we found some code that interested us, we could compare it to a master record of code which might have information on exactly when a feature is about to be deprecated or changed. Conversely, we could search for the solution, not simply by looking for postings which corresponded with a particular version of ubuntu, but searching intelligently for variations. There's no reason why blogging platforms like this one couldn't include a set of linux distro specific code tags. I know its not exactly rocket science and probably will never be implemented, but its an idea to think about.
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