Hi all, My name is Jens Dietrich, I am an academic from Massey Uni in NZ.
We recently did a study on (binary and src) compatibility in Java programs using the Qualitas Corpus dataset of about 100 real-world Java programs. JMeter is part of this data set (see http://qualitascorpus.com/docs/catalogue/20130901/corpus_catalogue-jmeter.html for some extracted stats), and is unique as it was one of only two programs (the other one being FreeCol) that are "API stable", i.e., we did not detect API-breaking changes (like changing the signatures or API methods) between versions. I wonder whether somebody could offer some insights why this is the case. Are there any particular project-specific policies to ensure API stability, and if so, how are they enforced? Also, how are the decisions about version numbers being made ? Any help is highly appreciated ! Cheers, Jens
