[Python-Dev] When to remove deprecated stuff

[R. David Murray]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2013 13:34:12 -0400, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 8/15/2013 8:29 AM, R. David Murray wrote:
> > A number of us (I don't know how many) have clearly been thinking about
> > "Python 4" as the time when we remove cruft.  This will not cause any
> > backward compatibility issues for anyone who has paid heed to the
> > deprecation warnings, but will for those who haven't.  The question
> > then becomes, is it better to "bundle" these removals into the
> > Python 4 release, or do them incrementally?
> 
> 4.0 will be at most 6 releases after the upcoming 3.4, which is 9 to 12 
> years, which is 7 to 10 years after any regular 2.7 maintainance ends.
> 
> The deprecated unittest synonyms are documented as being removed in 4.0 
> and that already defines 4.0 as a future cruft-removal release. However, 
> I would not want it defined as the only cruft-removal release and used 
> as a reason or excuse to suspend removals until then. I would personally 
> prefer to do little* removals incrementally, as was done before the 
> decision to put off 2.x removals to 3.0. So I would have 4.0 be an 
> 'extra' or 'bigger' cruft removal release, but not the only one.
> 
> * Removing one or two pure synonyms or little used features from a 
> module. The unittest synonym removal is not 'little' because there are 
> 13 synonyms and at least some were well used.

Yes, by "removing cruft" I mostly had in mind the bigger cruft, like
whole modules or stuff that is likely to break a lot of existing code.

--David