18F/api-standards

Standard length of time provided for deprecation, changes?

kaitlin opened this issue · 1 comments

How much notice should developers get before the API introduces changes? Breaking changes?

How much notice should developers get before an api or method is deprecated?

I have had govt APIs make breaking changes with zero notice and it's a big pain. I didn't see this covered in the document and I don't know what the standard length of time from notice to change should be but I think it merits discussion.

👍

I think the appropriate length of time depends on the impact, how heavily used the feature bring broken is, and how urgent the need for change is. So it might be tough to recommend a standard time. But adding a section about taking backwards compatibility extremely seriously is a good idea.

Feel free to write one and add it to the rewrite branch (referencing this ticket #) if you're feeling motivated, otherwise I'll do it at some point.