Another concept I'd like to bring up is the fascination we seem to have with protecting the users from being blithering idiots. We cannot protect them from themselves completely. At some point, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're not complete morons. If they do indeed do something as stupid as relying upon type inference in a case where it's clearly not applicable, then so be it. They'll get a ClassCastException and figure it out in short order.
On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 4:55 AM, Emmanuel Bourg <ebo...@apache.org> wrote: > Le 07/10/2013 20:14, Benedikt Ritter a écrit : > >> - loosen API compatibility policy? > > This topic alone deserves its own thread I think. > > Ensuring binary/source compatibility is very important. This is an area > where Guava is clearly not a good example, they deprecate and remove > stuff frequently. Every time I update the Debian package for Guava I > know this will break reverse dependencies, I have to fix it and convince > the upstream projects to upgrade as well. On the other hand updating a > Commons component is just a breeze. > > That being said, I think we are too strict on the compatibility rules. > Some incompatible changes are much less risky than others. For example, > adding a new method in an interface released less than 6 months ago > shouldn't be vetoed, but renaming public methods in a code that has been > in the wild for years shouldn't happen. > > Emmanuel Bourg > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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
