I wrote:

 > I'd suggest going the other way:
 > ONLY support deprecated features when run with a -legacy flag.

Magesh responded:

 > The user would always run ant using -legacy turned on without
 > caring to upgrade tasks?

Quite possibly - the idea here, though, is that the user has to explicitly 
decide to use the flag to get access to deprecated features. This avoids 
the "problem" of people using features and not realizing they are 
deprecated. The messages could also include "hints" to point people in the 
right direction.

One implementation could be to give errors without the flag, and warnings 
with. Behaviour could be something like this.

Without the flag:

Error: <deltree> is deprecated and should be replaced with <delete>.
Error: See http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/upgrading.html for details.
BUILD FAILED

With the flag:

Warning: Deprecated features are used in this build.
Warning: This build file should be updated to avoid using these features.
...
Warning: <deltree> is deprecated and should be replaced with <delete>.
Warning: See http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/upgrading.html for details.
...


Just my 2c,
Bevan.



--
"Programming is an Art Form that Fights Back"

Bevan Arps (<mailto:bevan.arps@actfs.co.nz>bevan.arps@actfs.co.nz)
Senior OO Analyst, ACT Financial Systems

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