Re: Stock Items Deprecation

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi;

On 18 July 2013 04:59, Matthew Brush <mbrush codebrainz ca> wrote:

> > > Should I just stop using gtk+ for
> > > development? I have not so much available time and rewriting code using
> > > deprecated classes should not use it all. I clearly prefer spend time on
> > > new code, or fixing bugs.
> >
> >
> > you can still use deprecated classes until we break GTK for 4.0.
> > deprecation does not mean removal, it just means that the deprecated
> > API should not ("should not", not "must not") be used in newly written
> > code.
>
> To be fair, it may not mean "immediate removal" but it does mean "slated for
> removal", which to a developer effectively means "you need to re-write all
> your code using it (sooner or later)", which is I think pretty much what
> Jean was griping about.

it's the "griping" that I don't understand. it's not like the
deprecation policy of gtk is new: it's been the same for the past 15
years. it's the same policy used *everywhere*.

removal can *only* happen when we bump major version, which will
require porting anyway and it's not something that will happen any
time soon; and even if it does, the older API series won't be
magically removed from the Git repository. people are still using gtk2
even if we released gtk 3.0 almost 3 years ago. I've seen people on
gtk-list ask about issues with gtk 1.x. nobody was using gtk 0.x
except GIMP, hence why nobody is asking about that.

seriously: API deprecated in the 3.x API series will continue to work
for the duration of the 3.x API series. that's why we *deprecate*
instead of removing and bumping the API.

deprecations are informative, not normative; we *cannot* force anybody
to migrate to the new API. we can hint that the deprecated code is not
going to be touched any more except for bug fixing, and that if you
want new features, then you should ask them for the new API.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

--
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/