[webkit-dev] Deprecating JS interface

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Feb 16, 2013, at 10:16 PM, Dirk Schulze <dschulze at adobe.com> wrote:

> 
> On Feb 16, 2013, at 6:54 PM, Adam Barth <abarth at webkit.org> wrote:
> 
>> It's much easier to discuss a concrete example.  Which interface are
>> you interested in deprecating?
> 
> I can understand that it is easier to discuss on a concrete example, even if I would like to discuss this in a general scope. We have multiple interfaces that we may want to deprecate at some point.
> 
> A concrete example I thought about is WebKitCSSMatrix[1]. It is not used in WebCore yet but hopefully replaced by a standardized Matrix interface in the future[2]. This new interface will not be fully compatible to WebKitCSSMatrix and I would like to warn authors before they actually start using it.

Since you're the one designing the new interface (or at least you are the spec editor), why don't you just make it compatible? Breaking changes to existing Web APIs should only be done as a last resort, and I don't understand the justification for doing it here.

Then we have a much simper transition story, and WebKitCSSMatrix can be aliased to the new class.

> 
> Again, I think it would be better to discuss this in a wider scope but am happy to discuss it on the concrete example as well. This actually might make it easier to come up with general rules in the future.

I think spamming the console is not a useful thing to do for interfaces that actually have significant usage in the wild. A more productive step would be to measure usage of WebKitCSSMatrix. If it's reasonably high, we're not going to be able to remove it.

Regards,
Maciej