API breakages - file bugs / update HACKING.txt ?

[Martin Pool]

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jelmer Vernooij wrote:
> Interesting.
>
> I didn't realize that policy existed but it has the potential to help distro
> packagers.  Of course, there's two ways to interpret that stability:
>
> 1) Every six months, public API changes can be made.
> 2) After six months of deprecation, a piece of public API can be changed.
>
> The first is much nicer for packagers as it means they have six months of
> releases that they can include and know there won't be API breakage that
> they have to consider when deciding whether to upgrade the packages in a
> stable release.
>
> Assuming of course that this is a goal that bzr will start striving to meet
> :-)

It's the second.  It's not a castiron guarantee as some APIs may be
harder to preserve than we think is worthwhile, but it is something we
strive for.  (At the moment 'worthwhile' basically depends on an
educated guess as to whether the change is likely to be used by
plugins; I think we do OK but it would be good to eventually test it)

The first does not seem so practical: not adding new APIs during that
period would limit our development.

If a user or packager just wants to update every six months then I'd
suggest they just take whatever is the latest release at that time and
stick with that.  There is no need to take every single upgrade.
Though obviously we do appreciate having more frequent packages
available for distros.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>