this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Is it really a breaking change if a method changes output after an update? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev
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This might seem obviously "yes" at first, but consider a method like foo.debugRepr() which outputs the string FOO and has documentation which says it is meant only to be used for logging / debugging. Then you make a new release of your library and want to update the debug representation to be **FOO**.

Based on the semantics of debugRepr() I would argue that this is NOT a breaking change even though it is returning a different value, because it should only affect logging. However, if someone relies on this and uses it the wrong way, it will break their code.

What do you think? Is this a breaking change or not?

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[–] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What about version()? Every minor / patch update would be a breaking change.

[–] rockstarpirate@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The way I do it, patches are backward-compatible bug fixes. Minor versions are additional features that don’t change existing functionality. Major versions include breaking changes. I totally get that it seems crazy to bump to another major version just over a string format change. But overall the philosophy works well IMO.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Works really well with npm. You can get security updates without changing the app.