Add Version Control to Lua API Library

[mikedkelly]

With many releases of Ethos, the lua library changes the calling methods to existing APIs, which break several 3rd party scripts. Please consider adding version control to the API library.

[robthomson]

There is.ans changes are notified.

It's up to devs to keep up to date.

Not really feasible on an embedded system to run multiple versions of backward compatibility.

[bsongis-frsky]

What do you expect @mikedkelly? All Ethos versions have their own Lua documentation

[mikedkelly]

I come from a cloud-based software engineering POV, so it hadn't occurred to me that you would need to store multiple versions of the lua library on the transmitter in order to have proper version control. There is not a good answer unfortunately.

[bsongis]

No need to store anything, I don't get what you mean! The API grows fast, and sometimes it needs some refactoring. Many projects do that. I like to take Google Angular as an example of something which moves fast and sometimes breaks all existing apps based on it, but the result goes better & better!

[mikedkelly]

I agree that Ethos is continuing to improve, and I am always in favor of the rapid progress. What I was suggesting was being able to pass in a version number when making an API call or having the API use an agreed-upon older version if not specified in the call. My request was out of frustration that I could not upgrade to Ethos 1.5.0, 1.5.18, or 1.6.0 until the developers of my relied-upon Lua scripts updated them to work with the updated API syntax. But given that Ethos, Lua, Aurupilot, etc. are all getting updated rapidly, it may just be the nature of being a developer that you need to keep your software current with the changing environment.