Abstract

This PEP outlines Python's backwards compatibility policy.

Rationale

As one of the most used programming languages today [1], the Python core language and its standard library play a critcal role in thousands of applications and libraries. This is fantastic; it is probably one of a language designer's most wishful dreams. However, it means the development team must be very careful not to break this existing 3rd party code with new releases.

Backwards Compatibility Rules

This policy applies to all public APIs. These include:

• Syntax and behavior of these constructs as defined by the reference manual
• The C-API
• Function, class, module, attribute, and method names and types.
• Given a set of arguments, the return value, side effects, and raised exceptions of a function. This does not preclude changes from reasonable bug fixes.
• The position and expected types of arguments and returned values.
• Behavior of classes with regards to subclasses: the conditions under which overridden methods are called.

Others are explicity not part of the public API. They can change or be removed at any time in any way. These include:

• Function, class, module, attribute, method, and C-API names and types that are prefixed by "_" (except special names). The contents of these can also are not subject to the policy.
• Inheritance patterns of internal classes.
• Test suites. (Anything in the Lib/test directory or test subdirectories of packages.)

This is the basic policy for backwards compatibility:

• Unless it is going through the deprecation process below, the behavior of an API must not change between any two consecutive releases.
• Similarly a feature cannot be removed without notice between any two consecutive releases.
• Addition of a feature which breaks 3rd party libraries or applications should have a large benefit to breakage ratio, and/or the incompatibility should be trival to fix in broken code. For example, adding an stdlib module with the same name as a third party package is not acceptable. Adding a method or attribute that conflicts with 3rd party code through inheritance, however, is likely reasonable.

Making Incompatible Changes

It's a fact: design mistakes happen. Thus it is important to be able to change APIs or remove misguided features. This is accomplished through a gradual process over several releases:

1. Discuss the change. Depending on the size of the incompatibility, this could be on the bug tracker, python-dev, python-list, or the appropriate SIG. A PEP or similar document may be written. Hopefully users of the affected API will pipe up to comment.
2. Add a warning [2]. If behavior is changing, the API may gain a new function or method to perform the new behavior; old usage should raise the warning. If an API is being removed, simply warn whenever it is entered. DeprecationWarning is the usual warning category to use, but PendingDeprecationWarning may be used in special cases were the old and new versions of the API will coexist for many releases.
3. Wait for a release of whichever branch contains the warning.
4. See if there's any feedback. Users not involved in the original discussions may comment now after seeing the warning. Perhaps reconsider.
5. The behavior change or feature removal may now be made default or permanent in the next release. Remove the old version and warning.

References

Copyright

This document has been placed in the public domain.