O'Reilly Open Source Convention - August 1-5, 2005

Session
Backwards Compatibility in Open Source Projects
Garrett Rooney, Software Engineer, CollabNet

Track: Linux
Date: Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
Time: 10:45am - 11:30am
Location: E143-144
When projects grow beyond a certain size, the looming specter of backwards compatibility begins to rear its ugly head. Users that once only wanted new features begin to require a certain level of stability, which naturally conflicts with the needs of the developers working on the project.

Learn how to meet your users' needs while still making forward progress, drawing from the experience gained during the development of the Subversion version control system.

Specifically, we will discuss the various levels of compatibility users require and the places projects might want to provide compatibility for their users, ranging from API and ABI compatibility to network protocol compatibility and finally on-disk format compatibility. Once the different types of compatibility have been covered we will delve into some tips and tricks on how to maintain compatibility while still adding new features and fixing bugs. Finally, we'll tackle the question of how to determine what kind of compatibility promises are right for your specific project.