+package Moose::Manual::Support
+
+# ABSTRACT: Policies regarding support, releases, and compatibility.
+
+__END__
+
=pod
-=head1 NAME
+=head1 SUPPORT POLICY
-Moose::Manual::Support - Policies regarding support, releases, and
-compatibility.
+There are two principles to Moose's policy of supported behavior.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item 1.
+
+Moose favors correctness over everything.
+
+=item 2.
+
+Moose supports documented and tested behavior, not accidental behavior or side
+effects.
+
+=back
+
+If a behavior has never been documented or tested, the behavior is
+I<officially> undefined. Relying upon undocumented and untested behavior is
+done at your own risk.
+
+If a behavior is documented or tested but found to be incorrect later, the
+behavior will go through a deprecation period. During the deprecation period,
+use of that feature will cause a warning. Eventually, the deprecated feature
+will be removed.
+
+In some cases, it is not possible to deprecate a behavior. In this case, the
+behavior will simply be changed in a major release.
=head1 RELEASE SCHEDULE
-Moose uses the release early, release often philosophy. Moose is not
-released on a schedule. Releases happen as new features and bug fixes
-are required.
+Moose is on a system of quarterly major releases, with minor releases as
+needed between major releases. A minor release is defined as one that makes
+every attempt to preserve backwards compatibility. Currently this means that we
+did not introduce any new dependency conflicts, and that we did not make any
+changes to documented or tested behavior (this typically means that minor
+releases will not change any existing tests in the test suite, although they
+can add new ones). A minor release can include new features and bug fixes.
+
+Major releases may be backwards incompatible. Moose prioritizes
+correctness over backwards compatibility or performance; see the L<DEPRECATION
+POLICY> to understand how backwards incompatible changes are announced.
+
+Major releases are scheduled to happen during fixed release windows. If the
+window is missed, then there will not be a major release until the next
+release window. The release windows are one month long, and occur during the
+months of January, April, July, and October.
-There have been to date, 98 releases of Moose over just under four
-years. This is an average of a release every two weeks.
+Before a major release, a series of development releases will be made so that
+users can test the upcoming major release before it is distributed to CPAN. It
+is in the best interests of everyone involved if these releases are tested as
+widely as possible.
=head1 DEPRECATION POLICY
Moose has always prioritized correctness over performance and backwards
-compatibility.
+compatibility.
-Major deprecations or API changes are documented in the Changes file as
-well as in L<Moose::Manual::Delta|Moose::Manual::Delta>
+Major deprecations or API changes are documented in the Changes file as well
+as in L<Moose::Manual::Delta>. The Moose developers will also make an effort
+to warn users of upcoming deprecations and breakage through the Moose blog
+(http://blog.moose.perl.org).
-Moose attempts to warn for deprecated features and API changes for a
-reasonable number of releases before breaking any tested API.
+Deprecated APIs will be preserved for at least one year I<after the major
+release which deprecates that API>. Deprecated APIs will only be removed in a
+major release.
-Moose will also warn during installation if the version being installed
-will break a known installed dependency. Unfortunately due to the nature
+Moose will also warn during installation if the version of Moose being
+installed will break an installed dependency. Unfortunately, due to the nature
of the Perl install process these warnings may be easy to miss.
=head1 BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
We try to ensure compatibility by having a extensive test suite (last
count just over around 5123 tests), as well as testing a number of
-packages (currently just under 100 packages) that depend Moose before
+packages (currently just under 100 packages) that depend on Moose before
any release.
The current list of downstream dependencies that are tested is in
=head1 VERSION NUMBERS
-Moose's version numbers are monotonically incrementing two decimal
-values. The version numbers in Moose are I<not> semantic. This means
-that version 1.00 will be the hundredth release, nothing more.
+Moose version numbers consist of three parts, in the form X.YYZZ. The X is the
+"special magic number" that only gets changed for really big changes. Think of
+this as being like the "5" in Perl 5.12.1.
+
+The YY portion is the major version number. Moose uses even numbers for stable
+releases, and odd numbers for trial releases. The ZZ is the minor version, and
+it simply increases monotonically. It starts at "00" each time a new major
+version is released.
+
+Semantically, this means that any two releases which share a major version
+should be API-compatible with each other. In other words, 2.0200, 2.0201, and
+2.0274 are all API-compatible.
+
+Prior to version 2.0, Moose version numbers were monotonically incrementing
+two decimal values (0.01, 0.02, ... 1.11, 1.12, etc.).
Moose was declared production ready at version 0.18 (via L<<
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=608144 >>).
+=head1 PERL VERSION COMPATIBILITY
+
+As of version 2.00, Moose officially supports being run on perl 5.8.3+. Our
+current policy is to support the earliest version of Perl shipped in the latest
+stable release of any major operating system (this tends to mean CentOS). We
+will provide at least six months notice (two major releases) when we decide to
+increase the officially supported Perl version. The next time this will happen
+is in January of 2012, when Moose 2.06 will increase the minimum officially
+supported Perl version to 5.10.1.
+
+"Officially supported" does not mean that these are the only versions of Perl
+that Moose will work with. Our declared perl dependency will remain at 5.8.3 as
+long as our test suite continues to pass on 5.8.3. What this does mean is that
+the core Moose dev team will not be spending any time fixing bugs on versions
+that aren't officially supported, and new contributions will not be rejected
+due to being incompatible with older versions of perl except in the most
+trivial of cases. We will, however, still welcome patches to make Moose
+compatible with earlier versions, if other people are still interested in
+maintaining compatibility. Note that although performance regressions are
+acceptable in order to maintain backwards compatibility (as long as they only
+affect the older versions), functionality changes and buggy behavior will not
+be. If it becomes impossible to provide identical functionality between modern
+Perl versions and unsupported Perl versions, we will increase our declared perl
+dependency instead.
+
=head1 CONTRIBUTING
Moose has an open contribution policy. Anybody is welcome to submit a
-patch. Please see
-L<Moose::Manual::Contributing|Moose::Manual::Contributing> for more
-details.
+patch. Please see L<Moose::Manual::Contributing> for more details.
-=cut
\ No newline at end of file
+=cut
projects / gitmo/Moose.git / blobdiff