I'd argue that "all of my scripts that use Mechanize are now broken" is from the user's POV a very major change.

Automatically checking the status of calls for errors is a great thing for new programs, but every old program following established good practice for using the module is now broken, and there is no alternative except to either downgrade the module (assuming you have the permissions and resources available to do so) or rewrite code that was already working just fine and they broke it without warning me first ARRGH!

The WWW::Mechanize change is a "perfect storm" situation: a module that's so good you want to use it any time you need to access something via HTTP, so you do. It ends up in many, many programs. You really depend on it. A change that will make new programs much safer and better goes in, but it breaks old ones. Chaos ensues.

A change that unconditionally breaks an existing codebase with no workaround is never minor. You should make a choice to do this only when there is no other possible alternative - a security problem, a major bug. This change was introduced because it was a "good idea" and "better coding practice". Yes, it absolutely is a good idea, and this is good coding practice. It should definitely have gone in.

But it is bad maintenance practice.

In reply to Re^2: On moving forward and breaking compatibility by pemungkah
in thread On moving forward and breaking compatibility by pemungkah

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