[zeromq-dev] ZMQ_IDENTITY revisited

[Martin Sustrik]

Hi all,

Some of you may recall I've asked about whether ZMQ_IDENTITY option can 
be retired in 0MQ/3.0 some time ago. The majority asked not to remove 
the option at the time as it's being used in products.

I've promised to retain the option and that's the status quo right now. 
ZMQ_IDENITY is still available in 0MQ/3.0 (master).

However, I see a problem with this arrangement.

Given, that ZMQ_IDENTITY is a biggest source of complexity in the 
codebase (while at the same time being semantically unsound) I'll have 
to remove it from the codebase sooner or later be able to develop the 
product further.

So, what will happen is that we'll have 0MQ/2.x (old API, ZMQ_IDENTITY), 
0MQ/3.x (new API, ZMQ_IDENTITY) and 0MQ/4.x (new API, no ZMQ_IDENTITY).

0MQ/2.x is maintained by Pieter, 0MQ/4.x (the master) will be maintained 
by myself, but it's not clear who's going to do maintenance (backporting 
bugfixes etc.) of 0MQ/3.x.

If there's no maintainer, the version is going to bitrot pretty quickly, 
adding additional trouble for binding maintainers while providing no 
added value.

So, my question is: Is there anybody out there who needs ZMQ_IDENTITY so 
badly as to volunteer for maintaining 0MQ/3.0?

If not so, there's no much point in releasing 0MQ/3.0 and we should move 
directly to 0MQ/4.0, ie. new API without ZMQ_IDENTITY.

Martin