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Symfony plugin deprecation

June 20, 2010 · Published by Avatar of Stefan Koopmanschap Stefan Koopmanschap

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:

Deprecating a 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:

Plugin deprecated message

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.

Published in #Plugins

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Comments

Avatar of Zuzanna
Zuzanna said on Jun 20, 2010
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.
Avatar of Stefan
Stefan said on Jun 20, 2010
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.
Avatar of Thomas Boutell
Thomas Boutell said on Jun 20, 2010
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.
Avatar of lombardot
lombardot said on Jun 21, 2010
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
Avatar of Alex Joyce
Alex Joyce said on Jun 21, 2010
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.
Avatar of COil
COil said on Jun 21, 2010
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.
Avatar of peace
peace said on Jul 29, 2010
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.

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