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

Andreas Cadhalpun andreas.cadhalpun at googlemail.com
Thu Aug 6 23:56:19 CEST 2015


On 06.08.2015 09:41, Hendrik Leppkes wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 3:32 AM, Michael Niedermayer
> <michael at niedermayer.cc> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 05:05:12PM +0200, Andreas Cadhalpun wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>> IMO {
>>
>> trivial API, like identifers with different names or wrapers
>> that are identical except having 1 argument less.
>> That is API which does not require any testing to ensure its future
>> function and correctness, should be kept as long as they are needed
>> by a distribution.
> 
> I don't really mind if extra codec defines etc stick around for a
> while, as long as they don't break things.
> There is one part about the pixfmt compat code which does frequently
> break in weird ways though, #define PixelFormat AVPixelFormat
> 
> PixelFormat is a very generic name, and that define has renamed
> variables etc in not only a few projects before. ;)

You have a point there. However PIX_FMT_* is much less generic.
So maybe we could remove PixelFormat, but keep PIX_FMT_* until the
next bump?

>> non trivial API, which has a volunteer maintaining and testing it
>> and has one or more fate tests ensuring its fully functional and
>> correct could be similarly kept as long as that person is testing
>> and maintaining it
> 
> I would argue that for the sake of an easy to understand API, even
> then they should be considered for removal at some point.
> Usually there also is a reason we needed a new API, so the old API has
> short-comings that an emulation may not be able to fix.

But sometimes the new API is much more difficult to use, e.g.
FF_API_DEINTERLACE doesn't have a simple replacement.

>> the rest should be removed once it has been deprecated for a
>> sufficient period of time.
>>
>> Its a bit unprofessional to break/remove API every 1-2 years
>>
> 
> I think we can agree on that, but the functions under discussion here
> are 3-4 years deprecated, so yay? :)

This is not entirely true:
AV_PIX_FMT_FLAG_* were introduced in May 2013 and
avcodec_get_frame_defaults was deprecated in December 2013.

That might also explain why these are still widely used.

Best regards,
Andreas


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