All, FYI, in case you are not also subscribed to d...@avro.apache.org, there is a vote thread currently in progress for Avro version 1.9.0-RC4, which is binary and source incompatible with version 1.8.2
http://people.apache.org/~busbey/avro/1.9.0-RC4/1.8.2_to_1.9.0RC4_compat_report.html <http://people.apache.org/~busbey/avro/1.9.0-RC4/1.8.2_to_1.9.0RC4_compat_report.html> michael