Hi,
(apologies: written with AI help)
I think it would be useful for Commons Collections to use semantic
versioning for the public packages, rather than using the bundle version
as the package version.
There are two main reasons:
1. The bundle version and package version represent different things
For example, suppose we have:
4.5.0 - existing API
4.6.0 - with backward-compatible API additions
If the exported package version is simply taken from the bundle version,
a consumer compiled against 4.6.0 will by default require:
org.apache.commons.collections4;version="[4.6,5)"
That consumer then cannot run in an OSGi container that only provides
4.5.0 (and yes, that happened for us in Jackrabbit Oak).
This is actually the correct behavior: the consumer may use API which
was introduced in 4.6.0, so resolving it against 4.5.0 could result in
runtime errors such as NoSuchMethodError.
With semantic package versions, the package version reflects the API
compatibility:
major = breaking API change
minor = backward-compatible API addition
micro = backward-compatible bug fix
This gives OSGi the information it needs to resolve package dependencies
based on the API that is actually required.
2. The bundle plugin can help maintain the versions
The OSGi/bundle tooling can detect API changes and suggest the
appropriate package version changes.
That means we do not have to manually determine whether a package change
is a major, minor, or micro change in every release. The tooling can
identify API changes and help enforce the semantic versioning contract.
The important distinction is:
Bundle version: Which Commons Collections release am I using?
Package version: Which version of this particular API am I compatible with?
Using the bundle version as the package version effectively says that
every Commons Collections release creates a new version of every
exported package. That makes OSGi package version ranges unnecessarily
restrictive and mixes product/release versioning with API compatibility.
Using semantic versions for the exported packages gives OSGi a more
useful compatibility contract, while the bundle version can continue to
identify the Commons Collections release.
I can provide a (really small) PR implementing this, including the
necessary OSGi/bundle configuration and versioning changes, if there is
agreement that this is a direction worth pursuing.
Best regards, Julian
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