[Zope-dev] deprecating the deprecation system?

[Tres Seaver]

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Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> Perhaps it's time to deprecate the deprecation system.
> 
> Why?
> 
> * I've had good experience in the Grok project with just noting changes 
> that might break code in the upgrade notes for Grok and telling people 
> how to fix it. Using documentation more background can be provided and 
> it can become a lot more clear what to do.
> 
> * using the deprecation system requires quite a bit of effort, as we're 
> adding code. Do we test deprecations? That's quite a bit of energy spent 
> there that we could instead spend on documentation.
> 
> * it's a zope-specific system no other Python projects use. Now we'll 
> need some of them, but do we need this one?
> 
> * we've not been very good at removing old deprecations over time.
> 
> * the deprecation system's messages have traditionally not been of a 
> high quality. I recall occasions where it told me half of what to do, 
> and certainly won't give me any background on what is going on.
> 
> * for moving code around we have an alternative system: a backwards 
> compatibility import, documentation about what to do, and a tool part of 
> the test runner which can point out indirect imports.
> 
> I therefore propose we do the following:
> 
> * look at any package which uses deprecation warnings now.
> 
> * rip out the deprecation warnings and backwards compatibility code. 
> Even if it's really expiring in 2010 (I doubt we have much of this). 
> When you do so and you think anyone might still using that code path, 
> please make a remark in zope3docs/source/migration/34to35.rst about 
> what's going on and what people are to do.
> 
> * run the compattests to see whether anything breaks. I think it's quite 
> possible some deprecated code is in use by the Zope libraries themselves. :)
> 
> Thoughts?

I'm already on record as favoring this strategy. ;)


Tres.
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Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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