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From: Paul Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 21:25:03 +0100
Message-ID: <CACac1F81G-qqnY3_T7iexTXWnC9CZDWt+_ZoZDESYwmQ1UNw1g@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Maven coordinates going forward
To: users@groovy.apache.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
archived-at: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 20:25:09 -0000

On 27 March 2017 at 19:49, Keith Suderman <suderman@anc.org> wrote:
> +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.

As a Python dev, who's just started working with Groovy for some work
projects, I hope people don't mind me adding my opinion here.

I think you're right. The Python problems were largely because we
broke people's source code (that was a deliberate choice, 2-3 was
always intended as a backward compatibility breaking change, but in
hindsight I think the view is that we won't ever take that approach
again). So the package name change would be a similar compatibility
break for Groovy and you should consider carefully whether the
benefits justify it. From what I've seen of Groovy code, the package
names are needed relatively infrequently, so it's possible that the
breakage would be limited - but what's the benefit? Python's
experience is that simply "tidying up" is pretty risky as a
justification...

I'm not familiar enough with Java's packaging ecosystem and Maven to
know what the impact of changing the Maven coordinates would be, so
I'll say nothing on that one.

I know very little about the Groovy or Java communities, though. Their
tolerance for change is likely very different from the Python
community's (both for better and worse) so I'd rely more on your sense
of what your users will think than on what happened with Python.

Hope this helps,

Paul