Release process and backwards compatibility

[Jesse Phillips]

On Saturday, 9 March 2013 at 05:15:12 UTC, deadalnix wrote:
> I feel like a parot having to repeat the same shit again and 
> again and again. So I wont, I expanded myself on such topic so 
> many time already.
>
> See how PHP handled the transition from 4 to 5 for a good 
> example of how it can be done.

No, I'm not asking about improving the release process, I'm 
asking how do you mitigate damage done by this specific change. 
You can give people a compiler with some non-breaking updates to 
delay the inevitable, but if they take this change what needs to 
be done to make the transition easier?