[phobos] Decision on length of deprecation cycle

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 5/25/11 4:20 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On 2011-05-25 14:02, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> That should work. But then why not sticking to the current intended
>> scheme? Every release, whatever has aged sufficiently gets deprecated
>> and then removed.
>
> Overall, I prefer that scheme. As soon as you worry about how long has been
> scheduled for deprecated or deprecated, you have to check how much it's aged
> anyway. It is true, however, that we don't really have a good way of keeping
> track of how long something has been deprecated other than simply checking the
> last few releases after a release to see what has aged enough to move to the
> next phase for the next release.

I thought of that for a bit and there are two things we could do:

1. State the date of deprecation in the warning message. Instead of

"Warning: module xxx has been scheduled for deprecation."

we should say:

"Warning: since 2011-xx-xx, module xxx has been scheduled for deprecation."

2. Then, it's difficult for a human being to set in mind dates that are 
six months ahead. That's what electronic calendars are for. So I propose 
we define a deprecation czar role who simply uses whatever electronic 
calendar (google, yahoo...) to enact deprecation. On the day of the 
deprecation, the czar simply makes the change in the repository. For 
that we need a self-organized, thorough person. That's why I recommend 
Jonathan.

>  The main question is how long each phase should
> typically take. If it were only two releases, then there's probably some stuff
> which is currently scheduled for deprecation which we could now deprecate. If
> it were 6 releases, then there's probably nothing which should be being
> deprecated just yet. We need to decide on at least an approximate length of
> time, since then it's better organized, and we can then give some guarantees
> to those who ask about it.

I'd say anything measured in months is reasonable. You aired some 
numbers at a point that seemed entirely fine to me.


Andrei