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[gitmo/Moose.git] / lib / Moose / Manual / Support.pod
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eda0fb99 1=pod
2
3=head1 NAME
4
5Moose::Manual::Support - Policies regarding support, releases, and
6compatibility.
7
995b7d56 8=head1 SUPPORT POLICY
9
a0214906 10There are two principles to Moose's policy of supported behavior.
995b7d56 11
64936d78 12=over 4
13
14=item 1.
15
16Moose favors correctness over everything.
17
18=item 2.
19
20Moose supports documented and tested behavior, not accidental behavior or side
21effects.
22
23=back
995b7d56 24
a0214906 25If a behavior has never been documented or tested, the behavior is
26I<officially> undefined. Relying upon undocumented and untested behavior is
27done at your own risk.
995b7d56 28
a0214906 29If a behavior is documented or tested but found to be incorrect later, the
64936d78 30behavior will go through a deprecation period. During the deprecation period,
31use of that feature will cause a warning. Eventually, the deprecated feature
32will be removed.
995b7d56 33
eda0fb99 34=head1 RELEASE SCHEDULE
35
759dfceb 36Moose is on a system of quarterly major releases, with minor releases as
37needed between major releases. A minor release is defined as one that makes
7b1aba0f 38every attempt to preserve backwards compatibility. Currently this means that we
39did not introduce any new dependency conflicts, and that we did not make any
40changes to documented or tested behavior (this typically means that minor
41releases will not change any existing tests in the test suite, although they
42can add new ones). A minor release can include new features and bug fixes.
d1e4fecf 43
64936d78 44Major releases may be backwards incompatible. Moose prioritizes
45correctness over backwards compatibility or performance; see the L<Deprecation
46Policy> to understand how backwards incompatible changes are announced.
d1e4fecf 47
e4b7acd5 48Major releases are scheduled to happen during fixed release windows. If the
49window is missed, then there will not be a major release until the next
50release window. The release windows are one month long, and occur during the
51months of January, April, July, and October.
52
a0214906 53Before a major release, a series of development releases will be made so that
54users can test the upcoming major release before it is distributed to CPAN. It
55is in the best interests of everyone involved if these releases are tested as
56widely as possible.
eda0fb99 57
58=head1 DEPRECATION POLICY
59
60Moose has always prioritized correctness over performance and backwards
79dce67a 61compatibility.
eda0fb99 62
64936d78 63Major deprecations or API changes are documented in the Changes file as well
64as in L<Moose::Manual::Delta>. The Moose developers will also make an effort
65to warn users of upcoming deprecations and breakage through the Moose blog
66(http://blog.moose.perl.org).
eda0fb99 67
45d92036 68Deprecated APIs will be preserved for at least one year I<after the major
69release which deprecates that API>. Deprecated APIs will only be removed in a
70major release.
eda0fb99 71
64936d78 72Moose will also warn during installation if the version of Moose being
73installed will break an installed dependency. Unfortunately, due to the nature
eda0fb99 74of the Perl install process these warnings may be easy to miss.
75
76=head1 BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
77
78We try to ensure compatibility by having a extensive test suite (last
79count just over around 5123 tests), as well as testing a number of
ccc47a38 80packages (currently just under 100 packages) that depend on Moose before
eda0fb99 81any release.
82
83The current list of downstream dependencies that are tested is in
84C<xt/author/test-my-dependents.t>.
85
86=head1 VERSION NUMBERS
87
64936d78 88Moose version numbers consist of three parts, in the form X.YYZZ. The X is the
89"special magic number" that only gets changed for really big changes. Think of
90this as being like the "5" in Perl 5.12.1.
91
92The YY portion is the major version number. Moose uses even numbers for stable
93releases, and odd numbers for trial releases. The ZZ is the minor version, and
94it simply increases monotonically. It starts at "00" each time a new major
95version is released.
96
97Semantically, this means that any two releases which share a major version
98should be API-compatible with each other. In other words, 2.0200, 2.0201, and
992.0274 are all API-compatible.
eda0fb99 100
64936d78 101Prior to version 2.0, Moose version numbers were monotonically incrementing
102two decimal values (0.01, 0.02, ... 1.11, 1.12, etc.).
3d5e4dc0 103
eda0fb99 104Moose was declared production ready at version 0.18 (via L<<
105http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=608144 >>).
106
6abc21a5 107=head1 PERL VERSION COMPATIBILITY
108
64a1ebab 109As of version 2.00, Moose officially supports being run on perl 5.8.3+. Our
110current policy is to support the earliest version of Perl shipped in the latest
111stable release of any major operating system (this tends to mean CentOS). We
6abc21a5 112will provide at least six months notice (two major releases) when we decide to
64a1ebab 113increase the officially supported Perl version. The next time this will happen
114is in January of 2012, when Moose 2.06 will increase the minimum officially
115supported Perl version to 5.10.1.
6abc21a5 116
64a1ebab 117"Officially supported" does not mean that these are the only versions of Perl
6abc21a5 118that Moose will work with. Our declared perl dependency will remain at 5.8.3 as
119long as our test suite continues to pass on 5.8.3. What this does mean is that
120the core Moose dev team will not be spending any time fixing bugs on versions
121that aren't officially supported, and new contributions will not be rejected
122due to being incompatible with older versions of perl except in the most
64a1ebab 123trivial of cases. We will, however, still welcome patches to make Moose
6abc21a5 124compatible with earlier versions, if other people are still interested in
125maintaining compatibility. Note that although performance regressions are
126acceptable in order to maintain backwards compatibility (as long as they only
127affect the older versions), functionality changes and buggy behavior will not
64a1ebab 128be. If it becomes impossible to provide identical functionality between modern
129Perl versions and unsupported Perl versions, we will increase our declared perl
130dependency instead.
6abc21a5 131
eda0fb99 132=head1 CONTRIBUTING
133
134Moose has an open contribution policy. Anybody is welcome to submit a
204f629c 135patch. Please see L<Moose::Manual::Contributing> for more details.
eda0fb99 136
79dce67a 137=cut