[docs] add deprecation policy

1 files changed, 34 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/docs/deprecation.rst b/docs/deprecation.rst
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..d0454d5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/deprecation.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+Backwards-compatibility and deprecation policy
+==============================================
+
+Since Soledad has not reached a stable `1.0` release yet, no guarantees are made
+about the stability of its API or the backwards-compatibility of any given
+version.
+
+Currently, the internal storage representation is experimenting changes that
+will take some time to mature and settle up. For the moment, no given SOLEDAD
+release is offering any backwards-compatibility guarantees.
+
+Although serious efforts are being made to ensure no data is corrupted or lost
+while upgrading soledad versions, it's not advised to use SOLEDAD for any
+critical storage at the moment, or to upgrade versions without any external data
+backup (for instance, an email application that uses SOLEDAD should allow to
+export mail data or PGP keys in a convertible format before upgrading).
+
+Deprecation Policy
+------------------
+
+The points above standing, the development team behind SOLEDAD will strive to
+provide clear migration paths between any two given, consecutive **minor
+releases**, in an automated form wherever possible.
+
+This means, for example, that a migration script will be provided with the
+``0.10`` release, to migrate data stored by any of the ``0.9.x`` soledad
+versions. Another script will be provided to migrate from  ``0.10`` to ``0.11``,
+etc (but not, for instance, from ``0.8`` to ``0.10``).
+
+At the same time, there's a backwards-compatibility policy of **deprecating APIs
+after 2 minor releases**. This means that a feature will start to be marked as
+deprecated in ``0.10``, with a warning being raised for 2 minor releases, and
+the API will disappear completely no sooner than in ``0.12``.
+