[vtk-developers] VTK Deprecation Syntax

[Brad King]

David C. Thompson wrote:
> Not so much a comment as a tangential question... Is a method supposed
> to go through a period (at least one formal VTK release) where it is
> deprecated but defined before being marked as a legacy method? For
> example, I've documented vtkMeshQuality::SetRatio() as a deprecated
> method, but no VTK release has been made since this change. Should I
> wait until 5.2 to put this method in a VTK_LEGACY_METHOD macro, or make
> the change for 5.0?

The mark as a legacy method is our deprecation approach.  The method 
should be marked as legacy for one formal release and then removed. 
However, a method that was never present in a previous formal release 
can just be removed immediately.  I see your method was in VTK 4.4. 
Please mark your method as legacy for the 5.0 release.  When we reach 
consensus on the new syntax then I'll convert your mark over to it.

This is actually one of the reasons we came up with the new legacy 
syntax I proposed.  We have been using "legacy" to mean "deprecated" but 
in a stronger sense: "this method is deprecated and you really should 
stop using it now".  The idea of the new approach is that a method can 
be marked as legacy but provide the user with an option to control how 
strongly the method complains (no complaint, compile-time complaint, 
run-time complaint, or completely missing).

-Brad