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Changing void returning type in Java methods breaks binary compatibility

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til java compatibility dev

While proposing changes to Kafka Streams DSL, I propose changing the return type of one method from void to KStream<KOut, VOut. I was under the (wrong) impression that this change wouldn’t affect users. I was also not considering that applications might just drop a new library without recompiling their application.

This change is what is known as source compatible but not binary compatible — meaning the user will need to recompile their application.

If you drop a newer version into your application expecting a void method would case this:

java -jar kafka-streams-poc-new-transformer-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: 'void org.apache.kafka.streams.kstream.KStream.process(org.apache.kafka.streams.processor.api.ProcessorSupplier, java.lang.String[])'
        at poc.App.topology(App.java:41)
        at poc.App.main(App.java:22)