develooper Front page | perl.perl5.porters | Postings from February 2023

Re: Deprecation doesn't mean we have two release cycles beforethings break.

Thread Previous | Thread Next
From:
sisyphus
Date:
February 28, 2023 11:23
Subject:
Re: Deprecation doesn't mean we have two release cycles beforethings break.
Message ID:
CADZSBj089hgs=Q-WBt_L5nn=ZYrQhJYK=Z9dh+KwH3zwWpVZjg@mail.gmail.com
On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 9:17 PM demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com> wrote:

> There seems to be this idea that if we deprecate something that we have
> two release cycles, IOW, two *years*, before we have to get stuff fixed,
> and that the only code which might be broken by the deprecation is code
> that use fatal warnings, which we generally advise people not to use.
>

IMO, in this case a suitable fix is to have the fatality of the warnings
disabled.


> But that isn't correct. Odds are *very* likely we get CPAN breakage from
> the very moment we deprecate something, as many modules test to see if they
> generate warnings when they run. This can be transitive breakage with
> "action at a distance", where distribution A uses B uses C used D which
> uses a deprecated feature, and only A actually fails test because it tests
> for warnings but B and C and D do not.
>

IMO,  in this case a suitable fix is to have distribution A's test suite
modified to accept or ignore the fact that module D presented a deprecation
warning. There's no need to modify module D.

Is that about it ?
Are there any other scenarios we need to consider at this stage?

The first thing to do would be to file bug reports against the affected
modules - ie either because they fatalize warnings, or because their test
suite overlooked the possibility of "action at a distance".
After that, what we do depends upon whether the registered maintainer
co-operates, or responds but won't co-operate, or doesn't respond.

Have the changes that trigger these issues already been merged into blead ?
If so, I'll start checking the distros listed at
https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20863 in the next day or so, and file
bug reports about the impending changes as appropriate.
Is that a sane way to start ?

Cheers,
Rob

Thread Previous | Thread Next


nntp.perl.org: Perl Programming lists via nntp and http.
Comments to Ask Bjørn Hansen at ask@perl.org | Group listing | About