Detect an incompatible API change without version change

Question

I'm using semantic versioning on a Java - Maven - Jenkins project and accordingly, whenever an incompatible API change is done, the major version of the product should be changed. I'm looking for an automated way to detect such a change, so that the maven build would fail if it happened (or even automatically increase the version). Googling has me on the track of writing my own maven enforcer plugin rule, but I want to ask if anybody knows about any tool that can help (Jenkins plugin or similar would also work).

Answer 1

A year has passed but I hope this can help someone in the future. Based on the comment by wemu, I found this:

Clirr

• Command Line: http://clirr.sourceforge.net/
• Maven Plugin: http://www.mojohaus.org/clirr-maven-plugin/
• SonarQube Plugin: http://docs.sonarqube.org/display/PLUG/Clirr+Plugin

Java API Compliance Checker

• Command Line: https://github.com/lvc/japi-compliance-checker

Revapi (Supports Java 8)

• Home: http://revapi.org
• Maven Plugin: https://github.com/revapi/revapi
• Aditional Info: http://massol.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Blog/ByeByeCLIRRWelcomeRevapi

japicmp (Supports Java 8)

• Command Line / Maven Plugin: http://siom79.github.io/japicmp/