DIP 1013: The Deprecation Process -- Community Review Round 1

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Monday, April 02, 2018 07:05:45 Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> DIP 1013 is titled "The Deprecation Process".
>
> https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/d8f6bfa1810c9774bd7d3b3dc6a7a6776ed5e17
> e/DIPs/DIP1013.md
>
> All review-related feedback on and discussion of the DIP should
> occur in this thread. The review period will end at 11:59 PM ET
> on April 26 (3:59 AM GMT), or when I make a post declaring it
> complete.
>
> At the end of Round 1, if further review is deemed necessary, the
> DIP will be scheduled for another round. Otherwise, it will be
> queued for the formal review and evaluation by the language
> authors.
>
> Please familiarize yourself with the documentation for the
> Community Review before participating.
>
> https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/PROCEDURE.md#community-review
>
> Note that you can always see the schedule for this and other DIPs
> that have left Draft Review at:
>
> https://calendar.google.com/calendar/b/1?cid=c29jaWFsQGRsYW5nLm9yZw
>
> Thanks in advance to all who participate.
>
> Destroy!

Overall, I think that this DIP is solid. As far as Phobos goes, it follows
essentially the same process that we do now, but it formalizes and clarifies
a few things. The big change is going from using dates to specific releases
for the deprecation cycle, and that was recently agreed upon. We've been
doing one year as deprecated and documented and one year as deprecated and
undocumented prior to removal, and the DIP matches that on the assumption
that we're going to have 5 - 6 major releases a year. So, on the whole, I
very much approve of this DIP.

The only tweaks that I would suggest are:

1. Clarify that it's the removal release in the messages, not the one where
the symbol is undocumented. The DIP is not clear on that. In the
documentation, I've historically been using the date that the symbol would
be undocumented, and that has caused confusion about the length of the
deprecation cycle. Using the removal release would be clearer, and
subtracting by five to determine the release for undocumenting the symbol is
easy.

2. Somewhere, it should state that the goal is for the typical deprecation
cycle for a symbol to last approximately two years and that the number of
releases was picked on the assumption that we would have approximately 5 - 6
major releases a year. So, if at some point in the future, the typical
number of releases in a year changes for whatever reason, the number of
releases of the deprecation cycle should then be adjusted so that the
deprecation cycle stays approximately two years long.

- Jonathan M Davis