Seeking advice on maintaining backwards compatibility for newly developed node

Node Development
1

I have recently created my first KNIME node that seems to work well on version 2.11.2. The node has been exported and included in the "dropins" directory of previous versions of KNIME (2.10.3 and 2.9.4). In both versions the following message is output to the KNIME console pane when attempting to apply the configurations.

Configure failed (NoSuchMethodError): org.knime.core.util.FileUtil.toURL(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/net/URL;

I beleive that this may have been caused by recent updates to the org.knime.core.util.FileUtil class and my experience configuring Eclipse is rather limited. Please advise on the steps required to resolve this issue and maintain backwards compatibility.

Thank you.

2

Easy, just don't use the methods that have been added in 2.11 if you want the node to run in earlier version. The Javadoc states in which version a class or method was added.

You should also use version ranges on your dependencies and use proper features instead of the discouraged dropins folder. Then the installation process would have told you that the node is incompatible with the older KNIME version. This is the nice thing about using features and update sites, it warns the user *before* the installation and doesn't result in strange behaviour and error messages that normal users don't understand.