This marks the second major version update for libhinawa, coming three years
after version 2.0 release. I'm delighted to provide it to the users of Linux
FireWire subsystem.

You might be wondering, "The major version of previous release was 2, but the
major version of this new release is 4. Where is version 3?" Indeed, version 3
is skipped. This is because of a version mismatch between the library itself
and the GObject Introspection (g-i) metadata version. In the early stages of
development, g-i was supported, but the version of metadata was numbered as
1.0, while the library had a major version of 0. Afterward, the major version
of g-i metadata has always been one ahead of the major version of library. This
mismatch has persisted for a long time. The version 2 releases of library
provides version 3.0 of g-i metadata, which is why version 3 of library is
skipped for consistency in major versions.

With this major version update come some significant changes and the loss of
backward compatibility. The most notable difference compared to the previous
major releases is the removal of specific features to interact with ALSA HwDep
character devices. The features were originally added with the assistance by
drivers in ALSA firewire stack, thus have relationship with different Linux
subsystem. Alternatively, libhitaki provides the features by modern approach.
Users of the features are encouraged to migrate to libhitaki.

https://github.com/alsa-project/libhitaki

The journey of development began in September 2014, and it has continued for
nearly a decade. The long-term development has led to the deprecation and
obsolescence of some features. In this new release, certain methods,
properties, and signals were removed. Additionally, any methods, properties,
and signals that remain have been slightly altered to address any issues. If
you encounter any difficulties building applications, please consult the
official documentation to find their updated prototypes:

https://alsa-project.github.io/gobject-introspection-docs/hinawa/

Finally, you can find the compressed package archive, along with signatures
from both the kernel.org system admin and the author, at this URL:

https://kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/ieee1394/libhinawa-4.0.0.tar.xz

This package archive corresponds exactly to the 4.0.0 signed tag in the upstream
repository:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/ieee1394/libhinawa.git/tag/?h=4.0.0

Instructions for building can be found in README.rst.

Cheers