Official procedure for feature removal ? / was: Re: Dead code:programs/Xserver/iplan2p[248]

[Roland Mainz]

Adam Jackson wrote:
> > > These three directories appear to be completely abandoned.  I can't find
> > > any reference to them in any of the live configs or Imakefiles.
> > > According to xf86's CVS history they haven't been substantially modified
> > > in eight years. Unless someone speaks on their behalf within, say, two
> > > weeks, these three are getting deleted.
> >
> > It would be nice if you could file a bug into bugzilla to track that
> > issue (and for the .../Xserver/ilbm/ code, too) that there is an
> > official record of the removal.
> 
> But of course, #1534 and #1535.  Hopefully it's obvious that "RFD" stands for
> "Request for Deprecation".

Thanks! :)

> > BTW: What about setting up an official procedure for such a feature
> > removal similar to what Sun does in Solaris: First they annouce the
> > removal of a feature ("EOL notice", "EOS notice"(=end-of-support)) in
> > their release notes and then one of the _following_ releases then
> > removes it (e.g. there is always one release cycle time for customers to
> > scream&rant)).
> 
> Definitely.  gcc uses the same process to deprecate outdated or unmaintained
> targets, and it seems to work pretty well there.  My only complaint would be
> that it would have been really nice to have some deprecation warnings in the
> 6.8 release notes.  Oh well.
> 
> If we did decide on such a policy, would I have to restore xf24_32bpp to the
> build?

*shrug* ... it was removed before any policy was established... =:-)

> I cut it since no in-tree driver uses it anymore, and the only one
> that did use it required a non-default configuration to use it.

Xorg should really have a policy for feature removal - see Leon's email
in this thread...
(At least there should be some annoucements and a reasonable amount of
time before the removal... two or three weeks are likely not enougth -
think about the case that someone goes on vacation/sabattical and when
he/she returns all his/her stuff has been removed. Horror.)

----

Bye,
Roland

-- 
  __ .  . __
 (o.\ \/ /.o) roland.mainz at nrubsig.org
  \__\/\/__/  MPEG specialist, C&&JAVA&&Sun&&Unix programmer
  /O /==\ O\  TEL +49 641 7950090
 (;O/ \/ \O;)