Neutron main tree serves as a library for multiple subprojects that rely on different modules from neutron.* namespace to accommodate their needs. Specifically, advanced service repositories and open source or vendor plugin/driver repositories do it.
Neutron modules differ in their API stability a lot, and there is no part of it that is explicitly marked to be consumed by other projects.
That said, there are modules that other projects should definitely avoid relying on.
Specifically, no external repository should use anything located under neutron.openstack.common.* import path. This code belongs to oslo-incubator modules and is not meant to work for consumers other than neutron main tree itself. (The only exception is made for advanced service repositories that are tightly controlled by neutron community.) Long story short, if your repository uses those modules, please switch to corresponding oslo libraries or use your own copy of oslo-incubator files.
Neutron API is not very stable, and there are cases when a desired change in neutron tree is expected to trigger breakage for one or more external repositories under the neutron tent. Below you can find a list of known incompatible changes that could or are known to trigger those breakages. The changes are listed in reverse chronological order (newer at the top).
change: QoS plugin refactor
commit: I863f063a0cfbb464cedd00bddc15dd853cbb6389
neutron.extensions.qos.QoSPluginBase.
severity: Low (some out-of-tree plugins might be affected).
change: Consume ConfigurableMiddleware from oslo_middleware.
commit: If7360608f94625b7d0972267b763f3e7d7624fee
stop using neutron.wsgi.Middleware and neutron.wsgi.Debug.
severity: Low (some out-of-tree plugins might be affected).
change: Consume sslutils and wsgi modules from oslo.service.
change: oslo.service adopted.
change: oslo.utils.fileutils adopted.
change: Reuse caller’s session in DB methods.
change: switches to oslo.log, removes neutron.openstack.common.log.
change: Implements reorganize-unit-test-tree spec.
change: drop linux/ovs_lib compat layer.