Vivek Khera <khera@kcilink.com> writes:
> It is not hard. What is hard is when you change behavior abruptly
> between releases without a transition period in which you warn about
> an upcoming change when that deprecated feature is used. Ideally, it
> would have logged this error for the 7.3 release, and disallowed it
> for 7.4, something akin to the LIMIT transition.
>
> I guess nobody realized how some popular applications used this
> non-compliant feature before the change was implemented. Perhaps we
> learn from this experience and don't do this type of change again.
> Perhaps not.
Yeah, I can personally see a case for deprecating nonstandard features
and spitting out a warning, rather than dropping them abruptly. The
deprecation would last for one major release cycle.
On the other hand, if the nonstandard wart/feature is standing in the
way of implementing a high-quality and desired new feature (not
saying this did or didn't happen in this case; I don't know), is it
worth putting off adding the new feature rather than just excising the
wart and putting up with the pain?
-Doug