[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v2] ethdev: mark old macros as deprecated

[Ferruh Yigit]

On 11/5/2021 4:26 PM, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Fri, 05 Nov 2021 16:05:14 +0100
> Thomas Monjalon <thomas at monjalon.net> wrote:
> 
>>>>>
>>>>> What do you think about marking old macros as deprecated?
>>>>>
>>>>> This will cause warning in application code that is using
>>>>> old macros, but shouldn't fail their build (unless -Werror
>>>>> is issued).
>>>>
>>>> It looks to be the right thing to do.
>>>> I wonder whether we could wait 22.02 to apply it,
>>>> so users of LTS are not annoyed by it.
>>>
>>> I have no strong opinion, but tend to agree with Thomas.
>>> However, if an application jumps from LTS to LTS, these
>>> defines will be available in 21.11 without any warnings
>>> and simply disappear in 22.11. So, may be it is more
>>> friendly to deprecate in 21.11.
>>
>> That's true for a lot of deprecations done in the year.
>> Jumping from LTS to LTS is for production.
>> Intermediate releases should help in the upgrade preparation process.
> 
> Agree, the deprecation cycle is long enough and it is just a
> trivial warning easy to fix, or for those that ignore warnings
> they just won't care.
> 

I think Thomas is suggesting to postpone the patch to v22.02, is it
what you agree?

If so, plan is:
- Have v21.11 without this patch. So backward compatibility macros
   won't be deprecated in v21.11, and end users won't be affected
   from the rename at all.
- v22.02 will have this patch that deprecates the old macros. End
   user will get build warnings after this point.
- Remove deprecated macros on v22.11. If this time is agreed on,
   I will send a deprecation notice patch for it.