On 3/31/11 6:30 PM, sebb wrote: > Just discovered that Clirr does not complain if the throws clause of a > method or constructor is changed to add a new Exception. > Seemed like a bug at first, but it's not, because throws clauses are > only checked at compile-time. > > So e.g. adding "throws IOException" to a method will not break binary > compatibilty, but of course anyone recompiling against the updated > binary code will get a compiler error (if they don't already handle > the error). > > [This is perhaps why some incompatibilities in Math 2.x were not > discovered by Clirr] > > The Commons versioning rules require that changes to method signatures > necessitate a major release, so changes to throws clauses mean a major > release is required. > > Since this does not affect binary compatibility, AFAICT there is no > technical reason to require a package name change. > > A major release generally means that the user will want to make code > changes anyway to take advantage of new features, so I don't see this > as a big problem. > But we should try do document such changes. > > Clirr is not sufficient to detect whether a major version change is > required, so perhaps we need some other tool to detect such changes. > (Does anyone know of one?) I don't know if we can afford the license, but the best one I have seen is "sebb" he he ;)
Sorry, could not resist that. I don't know of any better freely available tools than Clirr. Maybe best to raise an issue there. Phil > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org
