Re: [commit] Deprecate remaining STREQ uses

[David Carlton <carlton at kealia dot com>]

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 11:50:48 -0500, Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@mvista.com> said:

> You've been pushing very hard to renaming things to deprecated_foo
> for a while now.  I think I'm not the only other maintainer who
> doesn't understand or approve.  It's a lot of work for you; it
> generates large patches and source churn; it causes patch rejects
> and merge errors for other developers; and the rest of us don't see
> or agree on the benefit.  Isn't that the sort of thing which should
> be discussed instead of implemented?

Yes.  Having said that, I think that deprecation is often a good idea.
I like it when these conditions hold:

1) There is a new mechanism A replacing an old mechanism B.
   Everything that had been done with B can be done with A, and there
   is general agreement that A is better.

2) Adding 'deprecated_' will cause uses of B to diminish faster than
   not adding it would.

Part 2 comes in to play if you don't plan to make the switch
immediately (within the next month or so, say), and when you're afraid
that people who haven't been closely following the relevant discussion
will add uses of the old mechanism.

I'm not sure that STREQ meets the second criterion - frequent
contributors are good about not adding new uses of it.  So, from that
point of view, the merge difficulties (and even the newly introduced
long lines) argue against it.  I could go either way, though.

David Carlton
carlton@kealia.com