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Details of the change can be viewed from the pull request.

FAQ

Q) Why use a long to represent the compaction value?

A) By using this format, we can better have a comparable that can be used by the client for both a timestamp version approach or an incremental numeral version approach.

Q) How does the compaction value get parsed from byte[] to long?

A) This is accomplished by converting the byte[] directly to long via the ByteUtils utility class. If any of these steps fails, then the compaction value is ignored (ie, its considered the record doesn't have a versioned compaction value).

Q) Why not compare the raw byte[] directly instead of performing these conversions?

A) Although the byte[] can be compared, it is not actually comparable. In order to compare these, some conversion operations would have to be done that, in the end, would not make it more efficient than directly converting to long.

Compatibility, Deprecation, and Migration Plan

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