Re: Deprecate vs. discourage

[Neil Jerram]

Greg Troxel <address@hidden> writes:

> Given the history of guile, I suspect that in some number of years a
> feature that has been discouraged will get moved to deprecated, and then
> removed.  So the question is really what kind of commitment there is to
> API/ABI stability, and I don't think there is much.

API/ABI stability is important, but it is also important that the
codebase can evolve.  So there must be a balance between API/ABI
stability and having to keep cruft in the codebase.

> The key question is whether we mean:
>
>   This feature exists and is the currently-known best way.

Huh?  Why would that be deprecated or discouraged?

>   This feature exists and we have no plan to withdraw it, but there's a
>   better way.  [and implicitly, the odds of us later deciding to remove
>   it are significantly higher than the previous category]
>
>   This feature still exists, and there is a better way.  We're going to
>   remove this feature in a future release, so you had really better fix
>   your code not to use it.
>
>
> I think discouraged is the second one.

I agree, but I don't think the distinction between the second and third
is helpful.  Hence I favour dropping discouraged and only having
deprecated.

Regards,
        Neil