Renaming Fields

[Cameron]

I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this, but I haven't found
it spelled out anywhere so I wanted to ask to be sure:

Can you change or rename a field name without affecting backwards
compatibility?

I assume the answer is yes because you qualify a field with a tag
number. Field names are just for the compiled java/cpp/py files that
are generated, correct?

[Jason Hsueh]

Yes, renaming fields is a wire compatible change. You might break things that use human readable formats like TextFormat, and of course any code that references the old field name.

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[Marc Gravell]

As far as the binary encoding is concerned, it won't care. Obviously any code involved would need to be changed, and it *might* impact the text-based encoding (I don't know for sure; I simply don't use this encoding).

Marc

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Regards,

Marc