Versioning

The CodeCharta version number is inspired by Semantic Versioning 2.0.0. The format is BREAKING.FEATURE.HOTFIX. We increment the

• BREAKING version when we make incompatible API changes
• FEATURE version when we add functionality in a backwards compatible manner
• HOTFIX version when we make backwards compatible bug fixes

But what is our API? For CodeCharta it is the .cc.json and to a lesser degree the interface of the analysis.

We’ll increment the BREAKING version only if our .cc.json schema changes in a backwards-incompatible way. The BREAKING version tells you which files a given CodeCharta release is designed to read. Please note that the .cc.json has a FEATURE version separate from the analysis/visualization because we don’t often add to its schema.

The .cc.json format is now at 2.0. This was a breaking change: the shell (ccsh) reads and writes 2.0 only, so the command-line tools no longer read a 1.x file directly. To keep using older 1.x files — for example to merge them or run long-term delta compares — upgrade them once with ccsh convert; afterwards they behave like any other 2.0 file. The visualization still opens both 1.x and 2.0 files directly. See cc.json 2.0 for details.

We consider the analysis to also be an API, but one that is less protected. Don’t expect a new BREAKING version should we ever change the ccsh parameters or remove an importer. We think that is acceptable because you probably only need to change a couple of words in your script if we change the ccsh slightly. This method leaves us flexible to correct unclear interfaces but still present a single version to users for both CodeCharta parts.