Deprecated Library Functions / Methods

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday, December 02, 2012 12:26:24 Johannes Pfau wrote:
> Right now we have can't promise not to break code because
> we can't keep and support code like std.xml forever but we also can't
> simply remove std.xml because we try to avoid breaking code. So we
> deprecate small parts of modules in every release which is a pita for
> everyone. Dropping all sub-par code and fixing naming conventions in
> one release would get us a clean restart without all that cruft.

I've done a lot in the past to try and fix function names which didn't have the 
correct naming conventions or were otherwise obviously wrong (e.g. the 
functions in std.ctype returning int instead of bool as if they were C 
functions rather than D functions), but there's a limit to what we can do, and 
we've arguably taken too long to resolve a lot of these issues. There's also 
increased resistance to breaking code. Walter has _always_ been against it 
pretty much regardless of the reason, and Andrei is starting to come around to 
his way of thinking. He's even starting to balk at removing functions which 
have been deprecated even though you have to compile with -d to use them at 
all. So, I suspect that it's too late at this point to do anything like what 
you suggest. What I've already done was requested by a lot of people (e.g. 
fixing the names of the functions in std.string), but it's also resulted in a 
lot of complaints - especially from those folks trying to use D 
professionally.

And even when we've gotten away with changing things, it's rarely been the 
case that we've broken stuff immediately. Rather, we've provided new 
functionality in new names and put the old ones through the deprecation 
process. So, I'd expect that std.xml would be replaced with std.xml2 rather 
than being thrown out and immediately replaced with the new std.xml. And while 
there was some talk at one point of outright throwing out std.xml even though 
we don't have a replacement yet, and it never happened.

So, while I can sympathize with your position and to some extent agree with 
it, I think that it's too late.

- Jonathan M Davis