A system and method for monitoring updates to the interface portion of a software library or repository. An embodiment of the invention determines whether detected changes made to the software interface are likely to cause backward compatibility problems. Initially, an embodiment assembles and stores a snapshot of a baseline version of the software interface. Then, an embodiment assembles a snapshot of an updated version of the interface and compares the updated snapshot to the baseline snapshot to detect whether any changes have been made. Any differences between the updated snapshot and the baseline snapshot are rated by an embodiment according to a backward compatibility metric and reported in an alert message to an appropriate user.