The recent upgrades to Org mode have been a source of great frustration for me. Many of the configurations I had previously set up stopped working as intended, and it took me several days to properly identify the issues, debug them, and find suitable workarounds. I believe that Org mode would benefit greatly from adopting a more principled approach to backward compatibility.

To address this concern, I suggest that all breaking changes in Org mode follow a versioning scheme similar to Perl's `use v5.34.0;`. This could be achieved by introducing an `org-defaults-use-version` variable, which would be set to nil by default, allowing the package to adapt its behavior as necessary. However, when `org-defaults-use-version` is set to a specific version, all configuration variables should adhere to the behavior associated with that particular version. Furthermore, I propose that all breaking changes be accompanied by a configuration flag, enabling users to disable the change if they so desire. By implementing these suggestions, users would be able to upgrade Org mode without the fear of spending hours dealing with frustration and debugging.

PS: Is there a changelog that ONLY lists breaking changes? There should be one ...