Name: rmT116609 Date: 08/29/2004 A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST : Sun should propose a mechanism whereby deprecated methods, classes could be removed from standard JRE distribution. Backwards compatibility could be maintained by providing a "backwards compatibility JAR", one per JRE release. When running any software that does not make use of deprecated methods/classes, it would run "out of the box" using the standard distribution. When running older softwaer that makes use of deprecated methods/classes, the user would have to add the "backwards compatibility JAR" into the boot classpath, before the standard JARs, in order to override the official release. Also, the standard online Javadoc should not include any deprecated methods/classes that have been removed in the standard distirbution. There would be two types of deprecated methods/classes: 1) Deprecated but shipped with the standard release 2) Deprecated and not part of the standard release Ideally you would remove deprecated items after X months/years and have it coincide with major revision updates. If Sun feels they do not wish to over remove deprecated methods/classes, please leave this issue open in order to gauge community-interest in the form of votes. JUSTIFICATION : 1) There is a general consensus that the Core JARs are simply getting too big for distribution. The JRE size has been growing in an alarming rate. 2) The online Javadoc is getting too cluttered 3) Interfaces with deprecated methods led to a waste of time whereby implementors must implement methods that never get used (Incident Review ID: 301272) ======================================================================
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