Just a Theory

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Removing Sqitch Deprecations

Ahead of the release of Sqitch v1.0 sometime in 2019, I’d like to remove all the deprecated features and code paths. Before I do, I want to get a sense of the impact of such removals. So here’s a comprehensive list of the deprecations currently in Sqitch, along with details on their replacements, warnings, and updates. If the removal of any of these items would create challenges for your use Sqitch, get in touch.

What would be removed:

  • The core configuration and directory-specification options and attributes:

    • --engine
    • --registry
    • --client
    • --top-dir, top_dir
    • --deploy-dir, deploy_dir
    • --revert-dir, revert_dir
    • --verify-dir, verify_dir

    The preferred solution is configuration values at the target, engine, or core level (settable via the options on the target, engine, and init commands, or via the config command).

    But I admit that there are no overriding options for the directory configurations in the deploy/revert/verify/rebase/checkout commands. And I’ve used --top-dir quite a lot myself! Perhaps those should be added first. If we were to add those, I think it’d be okay to remove the core options — especially if I ever get around to merging options to allow both core and command options to be specified before or after the command name.

  • The @FIRST and @LAST symbolic tags, which were long-ago supplanted by the more Git-like @ROOT and @HEAD, and warnings have been emitted for at least some of their uses for six years now.

  • Engine configuration under core.$engine. This configuration was supplanted by engine$engine four years ago, and came with warnings, and a fix via the sqitch engine update-config action. That action would also go away.

  • The core database connection options:

    • –db-host
    • –db-port
    • –db-username
    • –db-name

    These options were supplanted by database URIs over four years ago. At that time, they were adapted to override parts of target URIs. For example, if you have a target URI of db:pg://db.example.com/flipr, you can specify that target, but then also pass --db-name to just change the database name part of the URI. I’ve found this occasionally useful, but I don’t think the complexity of the implementation is worth it.

  • The old target options, which were renamed “change” targets back when the term “target” was adopted to refer to databases rather than changes. Sqitch has emitted warnings for five years when the old names were used:

    • The --onto-target and --upto-target options on rebase were renamed --onto-change and --upto-change.
    • The --to-target and --target options on deploy and revert were renamed --to-change.
    • The --from-target and --to-target options on verify were renamed --from-change and --to-change.
  • The script-generation options on the add command were deprecated four years ago in favor of --with and --without options, with warnings for the old usages:

    • --deploy became --with deploy
    • --revert became --with revert
    • --verify became --with verify
    • --no-deploy became --without deploy
    • --no-revert became --without revert
    • --no-verify became --without verify

    The same change replaced the template-specification options with a single --use option:

    • --deploy-template $path became --use deploy=$path
    • --revert-template $path became --use revert=$path
    • --verify-template $path became --use verify=$path

    The corresponding config variables, add.deploy_template, add.revert_template, and add.verify_template were replaced with a config section, add.templates. No warnings were issued for the old names, though.

  • The set-* actions on the engine and target commands were replaced three years ago (engine change, target change) with a single alter action, with warnings, and able to be passed multiple times:

    • set-target became alter target
    • set-uri became alter uri
    • set-registry became alter registry
    • set-client became alter client
    • set-top-dir became alter top-dir
    • set-plan-file became alter plan-file
    • set-deploy-dir became alter deploy-dir
    • set-revert-dir became alter revert-dir
    • set-verify-dir became alter verify-dir
    • set-extension became alter extension
  • The data hashed to create change IDs was modified six years ago. At that time, code was added to update old change IDs in Postgres databases; no other engines were around at the time.

If removing any of these features would cause trouble for you or the organizations you know to be using Sqitch, please get in touch.