Forward and/or backward compatibility between an invoking program and the invoked program can be maintained by using compatibility indicators and/or annotations to configuration settings that specify the desired behavior of the invoked program. Compatibility indicators and/or annotations can be used to override default behavior to ensure compatibility between a version of a program and a version or revision of a dependency of the program. Annotations can be made to configuration settings or to initialization programs and/or files. Configuration and/or initialization settings for the program can be annotated to indicate when default behavior of the dependency is to be overridden to provide alternate behavior. Configuration settings for the program can be annotated to indicate when future revisions to the dependency are to be applied.