Deprecation fi FI

Deprekaatio

We're doing our best to follow consistent deprecation policy in order to make both development as well as usage far more consistent.

What is deprecation?

Deprecation is the process of smaller or bigger breaking changes that render previously used options, arguments, functionalities or usage cases obsolete. Deprecation usually means that given thing was simply rewritten into another (similar) form, and you should ensure in timely manner that you'll make appropriate switch to it. In this case, it's simply moving given functionality to more appropriate place.

ASF changes rapidly and always strikes for becoming better. This sadly means that we may change or move some existing functionality into another segment of the program in order for it to benefit from new features, compatibility or stability. Thanks to that we don't need to stick with obsolete or simply painfully wrong development decisions that we made years ago. We're always trying to provide reasonable replacement that fits expected usage of previously-available functionality, which is why deprecation is mostly harmless and requires small fixes to previous usage.

Deprecation stages

ASF will follow 2 stages of deprecation, making transition much easier and less troublesome.

Stage 1

Stage 1 happens once given feature becomes deprecated, with immediate availability of another solution (or none if there are no plans of re-introducing it).

During this stage, ASF will print appropriate warning when deprecated function is being used. As long as it's possible, ASF will try to mimic the old behaviour and keep being compatible with it. ASF will keep being in stage 1 regarding that functionality at least until next stable version. This is the moment when, hopefully without breaking compatibility, you can make appropriate switch in all your tools and patterns to satisfy new behaviour. You can confirm whether you did all appropriate changes by no longer seeing the deprecation warning.

Stage 2

Stage 2 is scheduled after stage 1 explained above takes place and gets released in a stable release. This stage introduces complete removal of deprecated feature existence, which means that ASF will not even acknowledge that you're attempting to use a deprecated feature, let alone respect it, since it simply doesn't exist in the current code. ASF will no longer print any warning, since it no longer recognizes what you're attempting to do.

Yhteenveto

You have more or less a full month in order to make appropriate switch, which should be more than enough even if you're a casual ASF user. After that period, ASF no longer guarantees that old settings will have any effect (stage 2), effectively making certain features to stop functioning altogether without you noticing. If you're launching ASF after more than a month of inactivity, it's recommended for you to start from scratch again, or read all the changelogs that you've missed and manually adapt your usage to current one.

In most cases, disregarding deprecation warning will not render general ASF functionality unusable, but rather falling back to default behaviour (which may or may not match your personal preferences).

Esimerkki

We moved pre-V3.1.2.2 --server command-line argument into IPC global configuration property.

Stage 1

Stage 1 happened in version V3.1.2.2 where we added appropriate warning to usage of --server. Now-obsolete --server argument was automatically mapped into IPC: true global config property, effectively acting exactly the same as old --server switch for time being. This allowed everybody to do appropriate switch before ASF stops accepting old argument.

Stage 2

Stage 2 happened in version V3.1.3.0, right after V3.1.2.9 stable with stage 1 explained above. Stage 2 caused ASF to stop recognizing the --server argument at all, treating it like every other invalid argument being passed, which no longer has any effect on the program. For people that still didn't change their usage of --server into IPC: true, it caused IPC to stop functioning altogether, as ASF no longer did appropriate mapping.