[FFmpeg-devel] [libav-devel] [PATCH 0/20] removal of deprecated features

[Hendrik Leppkes]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 5:12 PM, compn <tempn at mi.rr.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Jul 2015 17:05:12 +0200
> Andreas Cadhalpun <andreas.cadhalpun at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 28.07.2015 15:36, Vittorio Giovara wrote:
>> > This set contains the removal of all deprecated features marked as
>> > such until 2012/early 2013. This was announced several times in the
>> > past months and agreed at several meetings (since fosdem and
>> > recently at the sprint).
>> >
>> > With more than two year span, downstream users should have had
>> > enough time to update their API usage (or comment otherwise).
>>
>> Unfortunately this is just wishful thinking.
>> As it is, your proposed removal of deprecated features is going to
>> break about three quarters of all packages using the libav* libraries
>> in Debian:
>
> i am against removing this api in ffmpeg, if my vote counts for
> anything.
>
> anyway to keep the old api and have the new api at the same time?
> yes, this means letting the old api rot, i have no problem with this.
> just to give time for projects to update. or maybe even create a
> wrapper ? bah.
>

They have had 2-3 years to update, what makes you think they will ever
if we don't force them at some point?
Some of the API is known to exhibit failure under some conditions and
having it actually confuses new developers as we have duplicate API
that behaves differently (and wrongly, even).

Removing it not only serves some purpose of "cleanlyness" as some
people like to pretend, but it actually removes a whole bunch of
problems which new users of the API commonly run into because they
accidentally use the old API (usually because some ancient example
they found used it as well).
Not having this old and wrong API at all anymore will prevent a lot of
these cases and instead help guide the users towards the new and
properly-working and tested API.

- Hendrik