Until now a version that renames or drops a key did not fail — it silently
ignored what it no longer understood, and the effect surfaced as a build
doing the wrong thing. Both directions of that happened within two days:
a branch config using `??:00` on a GitTally that did not know it yet, and a
`builds.maxConcurrent` that had moved to another section.
gitTally:
version:
since: "0.9.18" # enforced
below: "2.0" # release marker; GitTally decides how strictly
There is deliberately no version of the file format (no `apiVersion`): no API
is involved — GitTally reads its own configuration — and only one generation
is ever supported. The declaration exists to make an incompatibility
nameable, never to run two parsers.
`since` is hard in both directions. Too new a requirement is refused, and so
is a file written before the version in which the configuration format last
broke (`ConfigVersions.FORMAT_BROKE_IN`, empty for now) — that check needs no
declared ceiling, because GitTally knows its own breaking changes.
`below` is the team's release marker and only warns: an unmaintained caution
value must never stop a CI. The routine it serves is the one known from IDE
plugins — new version, warning, try it, then raise the marker and commit.
The reach of a violation follows the layer: the machine and project configs
abort the start naming the file and the rollback, while an incompatible
branch config fails only that branch's builds. A branch cut before a
migration must not stop the server or hold up the branches that are fine.
A file that declares nothing keeps working, and the CLI prints one line
instead of a stack trace.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
