=pod

=head1 NAME

Moose::Manual::Support - Policies regarding support, releases, and
compatibility.

=head1 RELEASE SCHEDULE

Moose uses the release early, release often philosophy. Moose is not
released on a schedule. Releases happen as new features and bug fixes
are required.

There have been to date, 98 releases of Moose over just under four
years. This is an average of a release every two weeks.

=head1 DEPRECATION POLICY

Moose has always prioritized correctness over performance and backwards
compatibility.

Major deprecations or API changes are first documented in the Changes
file as well as in L<Moose::Manual::Delta|Moose::Manual::Delta>

Moose then attempts to warn for deprecated features and API changes for
a reasonable number of releases before breaking any tested API.

Moose will also warn during installation if the version being installed
will break a known installed dependency. Unfortunately due to the nature
of the Perl install process these warnings may be easy to miss.

=head1 BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY

We try to ensure compatibility by having a extensive test suite (last
count just over around 5123 tests), as well as testing a number of
packages (currently just under 100 packages) that depend on Moose before
any release.

The current list of downstream dependencies that are tested is in
C<xt/author/test-my-dependents.t>.

=head1 VERSION NUMBERS

Moose's version numbers are monotonically incrementing two decimal
values. The version numbers in Moose are I<not> semantic. This means
that version 1.00 will be the hundredth release, nothing more.

Occasionally, we will release a test release with a version like
0.90_03. These versions may be less stable than non-test releases, and exist
so that developers can test potentially code-breaking changes. By default, the
CPAN client will not install a distribution which has an underscore in its
version.

Moose was declared production ready at version 0.18 (via L<<
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=608144 >>).

=head1 CONTRIBUTING

Moose has an open contribution policy. Anybody is welcome to submit a
patch. Please see
L<Moose::Manual::Contributing|Moose::Manual::Contributing> for more
details.

=cut
