[hibernate-dev] Compatibility Considerations wiki

[Sanne Grinovero]

thanks Steve, yes that's very clear and also easy to follow.

Sanne

On 14 August 2014 18:40, Steve Ebersole <steve at hibernate.org> wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>