> change is backwards compatible in that it does not break/change existing > API's only what they return
At the source level, it should be. As far as I can make out, though, at the binary level this counts as a backwards-incompatible change: "Changing the result type of a method, or replacing a result type with void, or replacing void with a result type, has the combined effect of deleting the old method and adding a new method with the new result type or newly void result" ([JLS 13.4.15](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-13.html)). I'm not sure what the intended policy around avoiding backwards incompatible changes in minor versions. If we are looking for binary-level compatibility between 1.7.3 and 1.7.4, for example, it would seem (based on the JLS excerpt) that this could break that :-( --- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/jclouds/jclouds/pull/419#issuecomment-47175984
