Ralph Goers wrote:
A version number less than 1.0 signals to people that you don't think it is good enough to be used in production. I'm just not sure what your standards are for marking it production ready.
Yes. exactly. It keeps certain users at bay. There is no standard for a 1.0 release. It's mostly a matter of a gut feeling, that is to say completely arbitrary. Alternatively, it will happen when enough users ask for 1.0.
From what I can tell Logback is being used in quite a number of places, so if you were to make an incompatible change between 0.9.9 and 0.9.10 I think a few people would be upset.
Logback is not as popular as log4j or as SLF4J. Again, with a library such as logback where there is little room for error, so we rather take our time.
As for signaling change, that is always possible. All you have to do is document your strategy on the web site. For example: 1.0.x - bug fixes, no binary incompatibility 1.1.x - enhancements - may introduce some functional or configuration incompatibilities. 2.x - big enhancements. Binary compatibility not guaranteed.
Actually, compatibility is mostly guaranteed by the SLF4J API which logback implements natively. Logback internal changes should be mostly transparent to users with few rare exceptions, notably serialization of logging events which changed between 0.9.9 and 0.9.10, and also between 0.9.8 and 0.9.9, i.e. it happens regularly. Once 1.0 is out, we have to be a lot stricter. HTH, -- Ceki Gülcü Logback: The reliable, generic, fast and flexible logging framework for Java. http://logback.qos.ch