Backwards Compatibility Guide

Note

Deprecations are removed with the next major version of the framework.It is advised to early on adapt your code already each minor as outlined inthe deprecation comments and the migration guides.

To clarify what changes you can expect in each release tier we have moredetailed information for developers using CakePHP, and for developers working onCakePHP that helps set expectations of what can be done in minor releases. Majorreleases can have as many breaking changes as required.

For each major and minor release, the CakePHP team will provide a migrationguide. These guides explain the new features and any breaking changes that arein each release. They can be found in the Appendices section of thecookbook.

Outside of major releases, interfaces provided by CakePHP will not have anyexisting methods changed. New methods may be added, but no existing methods willbe changed.

Classes

Classes provided by CakePHP can be constructed and have their public methods andproperties used by application code and outside of major releases backwardscompatibility is ensured.

Note

Some classes in CakePHP are marked with the API doc tag. Theseclasses are not stable and do not have any backwards compatibilitypromises.

The following table outlines several use cases and what compatibility you canexpect from CakePHP:

If you are helping make CakePHP even better please keep the following guidelinesin mind when adding/changing functionality:

In a minor release you can:

In each minor release, features may be deprecated. If features are deprecated,API documentation and runtime warnings will be added. Runtime errors help youlocate code that needs to be updated before it breaks. If you wish to disableruntime warnings you can do so using the Error.errorLevel configurationvalue: