Application Distribution: Versioning, Tracking, and Deprecation Support
 

Easily Manage and Upgrade Applications  

• Evolve applications while maintaining backwards compatibility
• Spend less time tracking versions of managed packages
• Safely deprecate Apex global classes, methods, and more

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Salesforce.com partners can now evolve their apps while maintaining full backwards compatibility—just like salesforce.com. Ever wanted to make drastic behavior changes in Apex while ensuring existing customer integrations continue to work? Now you can, thanks to the new versioning capabilities for managed packages. The following components can now integrate with a specific version of a managed package: Apex classes, triggers, Visualforce Pages, Visualforce components, Visualforce email templates, and the Enterprise and Partner API.
 
With the new Apex deprecation capabilities in Summer ’09, any partner using a managed package can stop distribution of any global Apex identifier such as classes, methods, and variables. We’ve also simplified how package versions are managed by introducing a formal bookkeeping process. Each package upload is now carefully identified with a unique version and upload number. This capability greatly reduces the administration overhead required to manage changes and uploads.

Note: Not auto-enabled; must be enabled by Customer Support.

(Available in Developer edition)

Additional Resources:

• Release Notes