Looks good! Mike
On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Michael Busch <busch...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > I wrote a draft for a mail I'd like to send to java-user to get some > feedback about the proposed changes to our backwards-compatibility policy we > discussed here and on LUCENE-1698. > Let me know what you think please! > > Michael > > > Hello Lucene users: > > In the past we have discussed our backwards-compatibility policy > frequently on the Lucene developer mailinglist and we are very tempted > to make some significant changes. In this mail I'd like to outline the > proposed changes to get some feedback from the user community. > > Our current backwards-compatibility policy regarding API changes > states that we can only make changes that break > backwards-compatibility in major releases (3.0, 4.0, etc.); the next > major release is the upcoming 3.0. > > Given how often we made major releases in the past in Lucene this > means that deprecated APIs need to stay in Lucene for a very long > time. E.g. if we deprecate an API in 3.1 we'll have to wait until 4.0 > before we can remove it. This means that the code gets very cluttered > and adding new features gets somewhat more difficult, as attention has > to be paid to properly support the old *and* new APIs for a quite long > time. > > The current policy also leads to delaying a last minor release before > a major release (e.g. 2.9), because the developers consider it as the > last chance for a long time to introduce new APIs and deprecate old ones. > > The proposal now is to change this policy in a way, so that an API can > only be removed if it was deprecated in at least one release, which > can be a major *or* minor release. E.g. if we deprecate an API and > release it with 3.1, we can remove it with the 3.2 release. > > For users this means of course that a simple jar drop-in replacement > won't be possible anymore with almost every Lucene release (excluding > bugfix releases, e.g. 2.9.0->2.9.1). However, you can be sure that if > you're using a non-deprecated API it will be in the next release. > > Note that of course these proposed changes do not affect > backwards-compatibility with old index formats. I.e. it will still be > possible to read all 3.X indexes with any Lucene 4.X version. > > Our main goal is to find the right balance between > backwards-compatibility support for all the Lucene users out there and > fast and productive development of new features. If we get positive > feedback here we will call a vote on the development mailinglist where > the committers have to officially decide whether to make these changes or > not. > > Note that in any case the changes will take affect *after* the 3.0 > release. > > On behalf of the Lucene developers, > Michael Busch --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: java-dev-unsubscr...@lucene.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: java-dev-h...@lucene.apache.org
