[FFmpeg-devel] [libav-devel] [PATCH 0/20] removal of deprecated features

[Nicolas George]

Le tridi 13 thermidor, an CCXXIII, Hendrik Leppkes a écrit :
> They have had 2-3 years to update, what makes you think they will ever
> if we don't force them at some point?

What makes you think they will ever do it even if we try to force them? They
will just stick to an older version of FFmpeg, and that would be worse for
everyone else. Well, not all would do that, but some of them, too many,
would.

> Removing it not only serves some purpose of "cleanlyness" as some
> people like to pretend, but it actually removes a whole bunch of
> problems which new users of the API commonly run into because they
> accidentally use the old API (usually because some ancient example
> they found used it as well).
> Not having this old and wrong API at all anymore will prevent a lot of
> these cases and instead help guide the users towards the new and
> properly-working and tested API.

I can propose the following middle term:

- Making the old features disabled by default but very easy to enable if you
  know how. A single #include <libavutil/depcrecated_api.h>, for example, or
  a header that needs to be replaced by another manually at install time
  (packagers can use a diversion mechanism to create a
  "ffmpeg-deprecated-dev" package).

- The features stay there but are utterly unsupported. If there is a bug, do
  not fix it. If there is a security issue, a build failure or anything of
  the kind, or if it makes it harder to add new features, remove anything in
  the way. If it breaks third party projects, not our problem.

The second point is nice, because it is the least effort policy: we do not
make effort to support the deprecated APIs, but we do not make effort to
remove them either.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George
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