[hibernate-dev] Compatibility Considerations wiki

[Steve Ebersole]

Check out my edits and see if that is better


On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Steve Ebersole <steve at hibernate.org>
wrote:

> That should read "API contracts should be considered stable within all
> releases within a major version".  As an example, an application developer
> should be able to develop against APIs as available in 4.2 and be able to
> drop 4.3 into that application without changes, so long as they rely only
> on defined APIs.
>
> This is what is called backwards compatibility: meaning that any changes
> done in 4.3 are done in such a way as to remain compatible with older
> (backward) versions.  Personally, I find the terms confusing because I
> think of it in terms of "porting" the application forward to use a newer
> version of a library.
>
> The inverse is something we actually do not guarantee in regards to APIs
> and going back to an older version (reverting).  An example here would be
> developing an application using the natural-id API developed in 4.2 and
> then trying to port that application to use 4.1.  That won't work.
>
> So within a major version we guarantee APIs to be backwards compatible,
> but not forward compatible.
>
> Does that wording help clarify?
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Sanne Grinovero <sanne at hibernate.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Steve!
>> that's extremely useful.
>>
>> My only doubt is the relation between release families, quoting:
>>  >> Hibernate considers the {major}.{minor} combination a release
>> "family".
>>
>> and then later below in paragraph "The rules" :
>>  >>  API contracts should be considered stable across all releases in a
>> family.
>>
>> I'm not sure if you mean that 4.4.0 and 4.4.1 are (promised to be) API
>> compatible, while 4.3.0 and 4.4.0 are not..
>> I would say from the definition above that I should not expect that as
>> the two are in a different family, still the following example seems
>> to point out that any 4.x will be drop-in compatible with 4.0.0 ?
>>
>> It would also help to understand the rules better to explain when the
>> team decides to bump the major version.
>>
>> Sanne
>>
>>
>> On 9 August 2014 15:55, Steve Ebersole <steve at hibernate.org> wrote:
>> > There was a discussion in regards to our view on backwards
>> compatibility in
>> > reference to HHH-9316.  I realized that we talk about this amongst
>> > ourselves, but that I have never written these down.  So I did that:
>> >
>> >
>> https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-orm/wiki/Compatibility-Considerations
>> >
>> > This is a first draft.  Let me know what you think.
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > hibernate-dev mailing list
>> > hibernate-dev at lists.jboss.org
>> > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev
>>
>
>