Deprecation schedule

[Stewart Gordon]

On 26/11/2010 23:44, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Friday 26 November 2010 15:19:37 Jason House wrote:
>> T2 - This should be quite long. There's no
>> reason to leave active projects with a non-compiling code base just
>> because an API in a low priority area has changed. I would say something
>> like 6-12 months. What do other languages do?
>
> Java marks stuff as deprecated and then _never_ removes it.
<snip>

Thinking about it now, I can see why.  Java .class files don't contain 
implementations of the Java APIs - they pull them up from the JRE on 
demand.  So if stuff were removed, old programs would stop working, not 
just stop compiling.

Though I suppose they could do something like declare Java 1 obsolete, 
and then another few years down the line start to remove stuff.  Maybe 
with a warning for anyone who tries to use a Java 1 app that it may not 
function correctly.  (Do .class files store such version info?)

.exe files, OTOH, have the library code they rely on embedded in them. 
So removing something from a library won't break these old binaries.

Stewart.