A bit of a pipe dream, probably not possible to implement and for the most part there are workarounds, however, having some kind of compatibility mode would really help as a consultant / solution provider.
When working with a large number of customers all of which have a different version of FME you need to make sure you have a lot of versions of FME installed to cater to all of them.
This is mostly fine, however, with each release of FME the Installation grows in size, and, depending on the size of your disk it puts a cap on the number of different Installations you can have.
If, however, I could always work with the latest version of FME (and take advantage of all the nice UI upgrades and things like workspace compare and merge like in FME 2023+) then it would really streamline the development process.
Expected behaviour:
- When opening an old workspace in a newer version of FME a prompt asks if you'd like to open in compatibility mode.
- Compatibility mode would essentially be a restricted version of FME - formats and transformers would be limited to the appropriate versions etc.
- Saving a workspace in while in compatibility mode would enable a workspace to be opened up in that version.
- An option with new workspace to set the compatibility version.
It should be noted that there would likely be sometimes differences in behaviour when actually running the workspace so warnings need to be put in place and the authors need to know the limitations. This perhaps would likely end up being a showstopper for some.
Another benefit would be when the FME Server version is older than then your FME Desktop version. This means the feature would not only benefit solution providers but also users who work with an FME server in a rigid IT infrastructure with slow upgrade cycles.
It would be acceptable if this functionality only supported a limited number of previous versions.
Being able to reduce the number of FME installations and being able to use some new UI features would be a real benefit.