Incubating --- what does it really mean?

Hibernate ORM
1

I’m working on migrating from 5.x to 6.1.x, and finding a lot of classes having this annotation:

Incubating - which is described as:

/**
 * Marks certain of packages, types, etc. as incubating, potentially
 * recursively.  Incubating indicates something that is still being
 * actively developed and therefore may change at a later time; a
 * "tech preview".
 * <p/>
 * Users of these types and methods are considered early adopters who
 * help shape the final definition of these types/methods, along with
 * the needs of consumers.
 *
 * @implNote Defined with RUNTIME retention so tooling can see it
 *
 * @author Steve Ebersole
 */

So - with the amount of things that have this annotation, how likely is it that subsequent 6.x versions will actually have non-backward compatible changes with prior 6.x versions? Asking because I’d like to know the potential risks involved.

2

We can’t say how likely it is as we simply don’t know. We won’t just change contracts for fun though. We usually will only change the contracts if there is a real need. Even then, we often try to do changes in a backwards compatible way, but we don’t want to commit to full backwards compatibility.
Having said that, I think that consuming these contracts should be fine, but if you plan on implementing them, you might be more affected by changes.