[AIT-322] Support protocol version bump to v6

[lawrence-forooghian]

Note: This is currently based on top of #11, but once that's merged, I'll create an integration/protocol-v6 branch from main and change this PR to target the integration branch.

Summary

We need to start using protocol version 6 as it introduces new LiveObjects functionality.

The main problem to solve is: how do we make sure that ably-cocoa doesn't force a protocol version on a plugin that can't handle that version?

Here we propose a simple solution. It's a bit clunky, but to be honest our whole plugin mechanism is a bit clunky so I think we can live with this additional clunkiness.

One other problem of the solution given here — that is, doing major plugin-api releases — is that if, in the future, we have further plugins, then we'll have to do new releases of all the plugins just because we needed to bump plugin-support for one of them. I hope that by the time we need to do further plugins we'll have moved to ably-swift (with plugins in-repo) and we won't have to worry about this!

Resolves ably/ably-liveobjects-swift-plugin#107.

Related PRs

• [AIT-322] Bump protocol version to v6 and add plugin compatibility checks ably-cocoa#2191
• [AIT-322] Support the protocol v6 ObjectMessage structure ably-liveobjects-swift-plugin#114

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Documentation

  • Added comprehensive guidance on dependency relationships, compatibility versioning, and release workflows for plugin developers.

• New Features

  • Introduced protocol compatibility indicators to support version management for Live Objects plugins.

[coderabbitai]

Caution

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Walkthrough

Adds protocol-version flags and publish-result types to the plugin API, adjusts LiveObjects plugin protocol methods, introduces an optional connection siteCode, and expands README with dependency, protocol-breaking, and release-playbook documentation.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Documentation & Release Workflow README.md	Added "Dependency setup", "Playbook for making changes", breaking Realtime protocol guidance (properties to use/replace), and a multi-step "Release process" to coordinate breaking plugin-support changes.
Plugin API — Protocol Version Flag & Send API Sources/_AblyPluginSupportPrivate/include/APPluginAPI.h	Added usesLiveObjectsProtocolV6 readonly property, forward-declared APPublishResultProtocol, and introduced optional nosync_sendObjectWithObjectMessages:channel:completionWithResult: providing publish-result info; adjusted @optional/@required markers.
LiveObjects Plugin Protocol Sources/_AblyPluginSupportPrivate/include/APLiveObjectsPlugin.h	Added compatibleWithProtocolV6 readonly property and internalPlugin accessor; removed nosync_prepareChannel:client: and added optional nosync_onChannelStateChanged:toState:reason:. Also imported APRealtimeChannelState.h.
Connection Details Sources/_AblyPluginSupportPrivate/include/APConnectionDetails.h	Added optional - (nullable NSString *)siteCode; to APConnectionDetailsProtocol.
Publish Result Types Sources/_AblyPluginSupportPrivate/include/APPublishResult.h	New header defining APPublishResultSerialProtocol (value) and APPublishResultProtocol (serials) with Swift bridging names.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~20 minutes

Poem

🐇 I hopped through headers, flags in paw,
New protocols snug, no tug or gnaw.
Serials tucked in a tidy row,
Site codes whispered soft and low.
Docs aligned — release bells go! 🎉

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title 'AIT-322 Support protocol version bump to v6' clearly summarizes the main change: adding support for Realtime protocol version 6.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The changes comprehensively address the core objective from #107 by introducing a mechanism to handle protocol version differences and prevent ably-cocoa from enforcing unsupported protocol versions on plugins.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	All changes are directly related to supporting protocol version 6: new properties and methods for protocol compatibility detection, publish result structures, and documentation on protocol handling—all within scope.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

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✨ Finishing Touches

• 📝 Generate docstrings (stacked PR)
• 📝 Generate docstrings (commit on current branch)

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch AIT-322-v6-ProtocolMessage

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed.

Inline comments:
In `@README.md`:
- Around line 54-66: The fenced code blocks containing Objective-C declarations
(the blocks showing the usesLiveObjectsProtocolV6 and compatibleWithProtocolV6
`@property` docs) are missing language identifiers and trigger markdownlint MD040;
update each triple-backtick fence to include the objc language tag (e.g.,
```objc) for the blocks that contain the usesLiveObjectsProtocolV6 and
compatibleWithProtocolV6 snippets so the README code blocks are properly
labeled.

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ℹ️ Review info

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Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between dd11843 and c20f969.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• README.md
• Sources/_AblyPluginSupportPrivate/include/APLiveObjectsPlugin.h
• Sources/_AblyPluginSupportPrivate/include/APPluginAPI.h