One of the problems we've been hearing about with the symfony plugin system was the fact that it was hard to see if there was still active development being done on a plugin. There was no easy way until now for developers to communicate to users that a plugin has been deprecated. This is now changed: Plugins can now be deprecated.
There are several reasons why a plugin may be deprecated. The symfony core framework might have included the functionality of the plugin in a recent release, or another plugin with the same functionality might be doing a better job at it. Whatever the reason, a developer is now able to mark a plugin as deprecated. This is simply done in the administration panel of the plugin:
This will cause a message to be shown on all mentions of the plugin in the plugin system. The message will look something like this:
We'd like to thank Cédric Lombardot for triggering the discussion in the core team of this topic and we hope both the users and the developers of plugins will like this enhancement in making it more clear which plugins to choose.
Wouldn't it be better to auto-deprecate any plugin after a given time if the developer is not refreshing the status? This will solve the problem of pre-alpha plugins where the developer is not caring about anymore. I'm sure he will not return to set the status to deprecated.
Zuzanna: I don't think that is a good solution. Yes, it will solve the problem you're describing, however it may also mark some plugins as deprecated that clearly are not deprecated yet (they just haven't been given a new release in a while).
This may not be the last measure against deprecated plugins, but for now, this is a good first step.
This is a helpful feature, thank you.
It would be more useful if the deprecation message accepted Markdown syntax, or at least turned URLs into links. This would allow users to easily find the best alternative. For instance, pkBlogPlugin has been deprecated in favor of apostropheBlogPlugin.
I'm ok on markdown with thomas Boutell. I'm not sure of auto deprecated system i have old plugins that's are always stable and not need updates but if they need at a moment i'm here for those ones
Instead of automatically marking plugins as deprecated, you can simply email the developer to update it IF it is deprecated.
This isn't a full proof fix but its the safest option.
That's a good idea, i've just updated an old plugin that I didn't finished. Nevertheless this deprecated message should also appear on the plugin homepage, not only in the lists.
I do agree with zuzanna. It would be better if the not-refreshed plugins were auto deprecated, and the developers were noticed by an email before.