+1 for changing Maven coordinates. -1 for changing package names. Sure, new code can use the new package names, but changing existing packages is just breaking changes for the sake of breaking things with no real benefit. I hope the Groovy team tries to break as little as possible to avoid the "Python3 Effect", whether real or imagined.
Having said that, how much public facing code is in org.codehaus.groovy packages? I don't think I've typed "import org.codehaus.groovy..." in my life, but IntelliJ may have inserted a few for me. Keith > On Mar 27, 2017, at 2:20 PM, Jochen Theodorou <blackd...@gmx.org> wrote: > > On 27.03.2017 20:08, Winnebeck, Jason wrote: >> The key thing in my mind is that you can't make a change that breaks >> 100% of libraries at one time without fracturing the community or at >> least introducing a major hindrance to upgrade that will mean >> maintaining 2.x series for a very long time. Even if the upgrade >> process is as easy as a recompile, there are a lot of published >> libraries no longer maintained. Even for the ones that are >> maintained, there are people who might not want to be forced to >> upgrade every library. I'm not a Grails user, but my impression is >> that the framework relies on a lot of plugins and is one of the (if >> not the most) active Groovy communities and I have a hard time >> envisioning how that upgrade path will take. You'd have to maintain >> Groovy 2 and Groovy 3 versions of each plugin, and to upgrade you'd >> have to upgrade everything at one time to the (most likely) latest >> version. >> >> What is the possibility that the package names are changed, the >> parser, metaprogramming model, etc. that all break in Groovy 3 >> change, but yet still have a compatibility JAR implementing the >> minimal Groovy 2.x classes in a way that allows interoperability with >> Groovy 3 code? Theoretically at a worst case, Groovy 3 should be able >> to view Groovy 2 classes the same way as any other Java class. I >> think many concerns would be lifted if Groovy 2 and 3 could co-exist >> at the same time, allowing you to upgrade incrementally. > > If you see the new metaprogramming model as chance, then it would make sense > to implement that in the new packages instead of transferring old and to be > deprecated classes. The goal would the to be able to run old and new system > at the same time, where the Groovy 1.x/2.x classes would use Groovy 3.x/4.x > classes as implementation. > > The problem with this approach is simply manpower and of course some > conceptual problems still to be solved. > > bye Jochen ---------------------- Keith Suderman Research Associate Department of Computer Science Vassar College, Poughkeepsie NY suder...@cs.vassar.edu
