Not sure that “back porting” is the best solution for this, we will see… Better was this suggestion, renaming the new component in R8 and leaving the old Area alone, without touching R7:
My take on new versions of (my internal) components is to add (only), and not change existing behavior. And…
… make additional code inside the component “optional”, depending on if the corresponding outputs are connected.
In the example below, if any or both the two lower outputs are are NOT connected, the code marked with red simply won’t execute (except for checking the outputs of course).
In the case pictured above, only the outputs MO and Filter is executed inside the component, while the big chunk of code in the middle (for the output Meshes) is simply skipped:
This way I get the speediest execution possible by omitting calculating functionality which isn’t used, while still having a flexible component useful for different use cases.
This is why I asked @DavidRutten to make the components aware of the events of connecting or disconnecting a wire on also the outputs. As it is now (R7) I need to re-run (F5) the definition (or change some value input value) to recalculate the component after connecting/disconnecting an output wire.
//Rolf