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Breaking changes – not great, not terrible

Track:
Tooling, Packaging, Developer Productivity
Type:
Talk
Level:
intermediate
Room:
Chambre Hall A (S3A)
Start:
11:05 on Friday, 17 July 2026
End:
11:35 on Friday, 17 July 2026
Duration:
30 minutes
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Abstract

Do you maintain a Python library, REST API or any other user-facing interface? Breaking changes are frowned upon, but from a a certain project size, they become unavoidable.

How do you make the breaking changes manageable? How should you version your package / API? Should you put an upper bound on your dependencies?

We'll discuss deprecation, forward and backward compatibility, upgrade strategies and more, illustrated on real-world examples. Our main focus will be on API changes of Python libraries, but the principles are widely applicable.