US Patent 8020146 Applying deferred refactoring and API changes in an IDE

A method, apparatus and computer-readable medium for managing changes to a library in a Producer IDE is presented. In one embodiment, the method includes the steps of compiling user source code in a consumer's workspace using at least one class from an original class library to produce a user's executable binary files; searching the executable binary files for references to Application Program Interface (API) changes that occurred when the original class library was updated; and generating at least one work item for each of the API changes that is referred to by the user's executable binary files.