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Date:      Wed, 25 Jul 2001 18:04:37 +0200
From:      Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@starjuice.net>
To:        Mike Barcroft <mike@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Peter Pentchev <roam@orbitel.bg>, phantom@FreeBSD.org, audit@FreeBSD.org, ache@FreeBSD.org, des@FreeBSD.org, jabley@automagic.org
Subject:   Re: whois(1) new features for review 
Message-ID:  <6944.996077077@axl.seasidesoftware.co.za>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:09:52 -0400." <20010725120952.B77004@coffee.q9media.com> 

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On Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:09:52 -0400, Mike Barcroft wrote:

> Peter is correct.  It was my intention to slowly phase it out, but now
> that I think about it, if I completely remove the -R option, getopt(3)
> will tell the user that it's an illegal option and display the usage.

That's not how things get deprecated.  The way it used to work was, I
think:

1) Mention is made in the manual page that the option, utility or
   interface is deprecated.

2) The option, utility or interface is preserved until the next major
   release.

3) The option, utility or interface is removed and no longer documented.
   It is now obsolete.

In addition to this, two ideas that I like are

1) Use of deprecated features causes warnings to be generated until the
   feature is obsoleted.

2) Release notes warn about both deprecation and obsoletion.

I think this willy-nilly instantaneous removal of features usually just
annoys users for the sake of gratifying the impatience of committers.
:-)

Ciao,
Sheldon.

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