Why public API change so often ?

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I was very surprise to see when a made an update of swing-fest from version
0.8 to version 1.0 to have a lot of errors in my source code.
I'm a big fan of fest, but this approach to change public API without any
announcement(marking as deprecate in a previous version, etc.) is not ok
from my point of view. I had in my project more than 1000 errors generated
by methods that were renamed/deleted/etc. I don't think this encourage
users to update to a new version of fest.

So my question to the developers is: would you intent to change(rename,
delete) public API without any announcement from this point forward or you
will ensure backward compatibility ?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by nicus...@gmail.com on 19 Jan 2009 at 12:59

[GoogleCodeExporter]

As a general rule in most (if not all) open source projects, any changes in 
APIs are
valid until a project reaches 1.0.

Original comment by Alex.Rui...@gmail.com on 21 Jan 2009 at 5:14

• Changed state: Invalid

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I'm sorry for the troubles when upgrading to a new version of FEST. In the 
mailing
list, I announced any API changes that can affect users' code significantly. I 
always
ask for objections and give a week or two to receive feedback. So far, I didn't 
get
any objections/suggestions before making API changes. I would recommend you to 
join
the mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/easytesting .

As I said in the previous message, API changes are valid until we reach 1.0. 
From
that point on, the APIs should be stable.

Cheers,
-Alex

Original comment by Alex.Rui...@gmail.com on 21 Jan 2009 at 5:19

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thank you for your answers and keep the good work.

Original comment by nicus...@gmail.com on 21 Jan 2009 at 9:47