Non breaking change is a term used to describe minor contributions which are supposed to not break anything and is abbreviated as NBC. Typical example include formatting a source file or adding a comment – it really, really should not break the build (of course there are always exceptional cases).
Is this a common term in revision control talk? I’m especially asking those familiar with RC systems. I use “NBC” on occasion but I never heard anyone else using it so I wondered…
(btw: Don’t trust wikipedia as a source on this)
To explain a bit on why I believe this term is useful:
Help avoid looking at the wrong place
Using an autoformatter typically results in a lot of changed lines, making the diff between revisions useless. “NBC” in the changelog is a hint that there is no need to look at the diff of the change when searching for a change that broke something.
I’ve been in the SCM space for quite some time and have never heard or used that term in relation to revision control of source files or to changes, like comments/formatting, that wouldn’t change the build output.
Typically I hear it in relation to changes to logic internal to built component but that are (theoretically at least) interface and functionally compatible with the rest of a system.