On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 11:17 AM Phil Steitz <phil.ste...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here is an idea that might break our deadlock re backward > compatibility, versioning and RERO: > > Agree that odd numbered versions have stable APIs - basically adhere > to Commons rules - no breaks within 3.0, 3.1, ..., 3.x... or 5.0, > 5.1... but even-numbered lines can include breaks - so 4.0 and 4.1 > might not be compatible. We would always maintain both an odd and > even branch - ideally in such a way that when an even numbered line > stabilized it would add a last hurrah of breaks and move to odd. > People wanting stable APIs could just stick with the odd-numbered > lines and [math] developers wanting to experiment with things and > not worry about compatibility could do that in the even-numbered > lines. In effect, this is sort of what we are doing now in 3.x / 4.x. > > I know above violates Commons policy if we actually cut releases > from the even-numbered branches - we would have to get agreement > from the Commons PMC that this is OK or somehow label the releases > differently. Just an idea to get us out of our current bind... > > I'm -1 on this idea. I don't like the idea of causing compatibility breaks within a major revision, no matter what. We should follow semantic versioning guidelines wrt compatibility breaks. If not, you're going to run into trouble in places like OSGi, which assumes you're following those rules.
