Hi, I wanted to bring back the topic of backward compatibility with respect to all/most of the user facing aspects of Flink. Please note that isn't limited to the programming API, but also includes job submission and management.
As can be seen in [1], changes in these areas cause difficulties downstream. Projects have to choose between Flink versions and users are ultimately at disadvantage, either by not being able to use the desired dependency or facing forced upgrades to their infrastructure. IMO the preferred solution would be that downstream projects can build against a minimum version of Flink and expect compatibility with future releases of the major version stream. For example, my project depends on 1.6.x and can expect to run without recompilation on 1.7.x and later. How far away is Flink from stabilizing the surface that affects typical users? Thanks, Thomas [1] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-5419
