Re: [MirageOS-devel] removal of deprecated config in mirage 3.0 (mirage configure --unix/--xen, add_to_opam_packages, add_to_libraries)

[Amir Chaudhry <amc79@xxxxxxxxx>]

> On 19 Jul 2016, at 12:32, Mindy <mindy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On 07/19/2016 12:26 PM, Amir Chaudhry wrote:
> 
>>> On 15 Jul 2016, at 15:29, Mindy <mindy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> As part of the move to Functoria, a few things were deprecated:
>>> 
>>> * invoking mirage configure --unix and mirage configure --xen to build for 
>>> UNIX/Xen targets.  Instead, use mirage configure -t unix or -t xen.
>> Was this deprecated?  I vaguely remember that we came up with a way to keep 
>> it.
> 
> The method for keeping it made it quite difficult to fix this bug: 
> https://github.com/mirage/mirage/issues/461 , which I think I'm not alone in 
> feeling quite strongly should go away.  There's some discussion there which 
> is relevant.
> 
> It hasn't yet been mentioned in this context, but the expansion of the number 
> of backends we support gives us a good opportunity to reconsider whether it's 
> a good idea to special-case the platform, also.  Soon we'll have people who 
> are mostly using `-t ukvm` or `-t virtio`, and if we remove the deprecated 
> --${MODE} before merging these backends, nobody has to rewrite or relearn 
> them :)
> 
>> I can’t recall the detailed discussion but there’s a mention on the 
>> functoria release tracking issue [1] (which discusses adding a warning, but 
>> there isn’t one yet) nor is there any mention of deprecation on the breaking 
>> changes page [2].
>> 
>> If I missed a discussion somewhere (which is likely), can we link to it?
>> 
>> [1] https://github.com/mirage/mirage/issues/447
>> [2] https://mirage.io/wiki/breaking-changes
> 
> They'll be mentioned on the breaking changes page for the 3.0 release (along 
> with many, many other changes that are currently in master).  I can (and 
> will) begin a branch to track these.
> 
> The functions in question are listed as deprecated in Functoria's 
> documentation for some time, and have been removed from `mirage-skeleton` as 
> part of "spring cleaning" a few times, although they keep creeping back in.

I’ve no problem with those flags going away, but I do think it’s important that 
we consider how.  There may be lots of blog posts/videos out there with the old 
way of doing it and I don’t think we’ve communicated enough that this is 
deprecated.  I’m not sure how many people will have read Functoria’s docs :)  
This may also be why they keep creeping back into mirage-skeleton.

Some suggestions which might mitigate later confusion:

- Add a note to the breaking-changes page now to highlight this actually is 
deprecated. It clearly mentions other things but not this change.
- If possible, add some kind of warning in the tool soon (as previously 
suggested). Would a point release work for this (2.9.1)?

I think this is has enough impact that we should try to forewarn users now if 
we can (especially if they’ve already been deprecated). I’m assuming the above 
points wouldn’t have any (negative) impact on the work for 3.0 but please 
correct me if I’m mistaken.

Thoughts?

Amir


_______________________________________________
MirageOS-devel mailing list
MirageOS-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.xenproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mirageos-devel