Breaking Change

Noun · Open Source

Definitions

  1. A change to software that causes dependent code to stop working. Renaming a function, removing a parameter, changing a return type — anything that makes existing integrations break. The reason semantic versioning has a 'major' number.

    In plain English: A software update that breaks things that used to work — code that depended on the old version suddenly fails.

  2. Semantic versioning (semver) attempts to communicate breaking changes through version numbers: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, where a major version bump signals breaking changes. In practice, even 'non-breaking' changes can break consumers who depend on undocumented behavior.

    Example: 'Technically it's not a breaking change since we only removed an undocumented field. Tell that to the 50 integrations that depended on it.'

    Source: semver context

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