Check for binary compatibility during Maven (or CI) build #2171
Description
Problem solved by the feature
As seen in #2169 (comment), one can easily by accident break binary backward compatibility, for example by changing the return type of a method.
Feature description
Either as part of a regular Maven build, or at least triggered by the CI, a check for binary compatibility should be performed.
Breaking changes should either cause an error or at least a warning, ideally with GitHub annotation for the code causing the issue. Optionally it might be useful to also generate a report which can be obtained as GitHub workflow artifact, showing the binary API differences. This could be useful to detect accidentially exposed methods or fields.
It appears there are multiple tools and Maven plugins for this; some of them are:
Alternatives / workarounds
Do nothing and review pull requests thoroughly to not break binary compatibility by accident?