[Clirr-devel] detect source compatibility problems (was: comments on recent commits)

[<lak...@t-...>]

Simon Kitching wrote:

>>On a related note, I have recently found out that messing around with a 
>>method's declared exceptions will not result in binary compatibility 
>>problems (surprising to me). Should we extend clirr's scope to check for 
>>source compatibility as well?
>>    
>>
>
>I'm +1 on reporting compile-time incompatibilities too. 
>
>I agree that changing the declared exceptions should be reported; a
>WARNING seems most appropriate to me. What do you think?
>
>  
>

My idea currently is to introduce two severity levels in ApiDeffierence, 
one for binary compatibility and one for source compatibility. For most 
differences we detect today they would have the same value.

For added checked exceptions binary compatibility severity would be 
WARNING (because strange things will happen if the exception is actually 
thrown and the client does not handle it), for removed checked 
exceptions it would be INFO. In both cases source compatibility would be 
ERROR.

This would have some effect on the Ant task, e.g. it should be possible 
to break the build only on binary errors. I'm currently working on that.

You like the idea?

Lars