This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Marc Logemann. Original Post: Library upgrades in a commercial product Feed Title: Logemann Blog Feed URL: http://www.logemann.org/blojsom/blog/default/?flavor=rss2 Feed Description: Marc's thoughts on Java and more Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Marc Logemann Latest Posts From Logemann Blog

Our product is installed at customer sites for quite some time and its slowly getting harder to upgrade important 3rd party libraries like Spring or Kodo because of the work that needs to be done to ensure that everything still works. Upgrading spring from 1.2.x to 2.x seems a no brainer, nevertheless alone this upgrade would cost us about a week because of said related work. Even harder is the upgrade of Kodo from 3.3.x to 4.x. In an insane moment i tried to upgrade it and estimated 4 hours for the main task of upgrading. In fact after 4 hours i had all mapping files converted but failed with the Spring integration and other minor undocumented things. At the end i had to branch out my changes and roll back.

Bottom Line: Never underestimate software or library upgrades. There are always tons of surprise during this process. But on the other hand, it makes no sense to deny upgrading at all because of that. You are going to miss plenty of new features that you get for free otherwise.