68 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
68 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
=============
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API stability
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=============
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:doc:`The release of Django 1.0 </releases/1.0>` comes with a promise of API
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stability and forwards-compatibility. In a nutshell, this means that code you
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develop against a 1.X version of Django will continue to work with future
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1.X releases. You may need to make minor changes when upgrading the version of
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Django your project uses: see the "Backwards incompatible changes" section of
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the :doc:`release note </releases/index>` for the version or versions to which
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you are upgrading.
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What "stable" means
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===================
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In this context, stable means:
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- All the public APIs (everything in this documentation) will not be moved
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or renamed without providing backwards-compatible aliases.
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- If new features are added to these APIs -- which is quite possible --
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they will not break or change the meaning of existing methods. In other
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words, "stable" does not (necessarily) mean "complete."
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- If, for some reason, an API declared stable must be removed or replaced, it
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will be declared deprecated but will remain in the API for at least two
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minor version releases. Warnings will be issued when the deprecated method
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is called.
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See :ref:`official-releases` for more details on how Django's version
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numbering scheme works, and how features will be deprecated.
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- We'll only break backwards compatibility of these APIs if a bug or
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security hole makes it completely unavoidable.
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Stable APIs
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===========
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In general, everything covered in the documentation -- with the exception of
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anything in the :doc:`internals area </internals/index>` is considered stable.
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Exceptions
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==========
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There are a few exceptions to this stability and backwards-compatibility
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promise.
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Security fixes
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--------------
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If we become aware of a security problem -- hopefully by someone following our
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:ref:`security reporting policy <reporting-security-issues>` -- we'll do
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everything necessary to fix it. This might mean breaking backwards
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compatibility; security trumps the compatibility guarantee.
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APIs marked as internal
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-----------------------
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Certain APIs are explicitly marked as "internal" in a couple of ways:
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- Some documentation refers to internals and mentions them as such. If the
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documentation says that something is internal, we reserve the right to
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change it.
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- Functions, methods, and other objects prefixed by a leading underscore
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(``_``). This is the standard Python way of indicating that something is
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private; if any method starts with a single ``_``, it's an internal API.
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