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Eclipse/API Central/Deprecation Policy
< Eclipse | API Central
This page contains draft Eclipse Project guidelines on API deprecation.
Contents
What is Deprecation?
Despite our best efforts, we don't always craft API that remains perfect forever. Often new and better approaches come along that supersede old ways of doing things. API deprecation is used to inform API clients that a particular API element is no longer recommended. The deprecation comment should describe the reason for the deprecation, and directions for how to replace their usage with the new recommended way of doing things. Valid reasons for deprecating API may include:
- The old API contract requires the implementation to be buggy, inefficient, or unable to handle all possible use cases
- The old API has been, or will be, deleted in a later release
- The old API is redundant, duplicating functionality available elsewhere