On Friday 16 October 2009 08:57:37 Michael Busch wrote:
> Hello Lucene users:
> 
> In the past we have discussed our backwards-compatibility policy
> frequently on the Lucene developer mailinglist and we are thinking about
> making 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.
> 
> The obvious downside of this proposal is that a simple jar drop-in
> replacement will not 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.
> 
> The developers haven't come to an agreement on this proposal yet.
> Potentionally giving up the drop-in replacement promise that Lucene
> could make in the past is the main reason for the struggle the developers
> are in and why we'd like to ask the user community for feedback to
> help us make a decision. After we gathered some 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.
> 
> So please tell us which you prefer as a back compatibility policy for
> Lucene:
> A) best effort drop-in back compatibility for minor version numbers
> (e.g. v3.5 will be compatible with v3.2)
> B) best effort drop-in back compatibility for the next minor version
> number only, and deprecations may be removed after one minor release
> (e.g. v3.3 will be compat with v3.2, but not v3.4)

I'd prefer B), with a minimum period of about two months to the
next release in case it removes deprecations.

Regards,
Paul Elschot

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