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76 lines
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76 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
=============
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API stability
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=============
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Django is committed to API stability and forwards-compatibility. In a nutshell,
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this means that code you develop against a version of Django will continue to
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work with future releases. You may need to make minor changes when upgrading
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the version of Django your project uses: see the "Backwards incompatible
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changes" section of the :doc:`release note </releases/index>` for the version
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or versions to which you are upgrading.
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At the same time as making API stability a very high priority, Django is also
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committed to continual improvement, along with aiming for "one way to do it"
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(eventually) in the APIs we provide. This means that when we discover clearly
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superior ways to do things, we will deprecate and eventually remove the old
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ways. Our aim is to provide a modern, dependable web framework of the highest
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quality that encourages best practices in all projects that use it. By using
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incremental improvements, we try to avoid both stagnation and large breaking
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upgrades.
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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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feature releases. Warnings will be issued when the deprecated method is
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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 without a deprecation
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process if a bug or 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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