RFR: 8168010: Deprecate obsolete launcher -d32/-d64 options

[David Holmes]

On 28/10/2016 7:08 AM, Kumar Srinivasan wrote:
>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> Please review enclosed fix for:
>>>> https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8168010
>>>>
>>>> Based on this discussion,
>>>> http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk9-dev/2016-September/004934.html
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> these options are slated for deprecation, only at the documentation
>>>> level,
>>>> and will continue to operate with no perceivable behavior change, in
>>>> JDK9.
>>> This looks okay to me although I've no doubt that it will go unnoticed
>>> until the options are actually removed.
>>
>> Right! The whole point of deprecation is to make it very clear
>> something is going away so people stop using it. I thought the
>> consensus from previous discussion was to deprecate in 9 and issue a
>> warning. And yes that still requires changes to the tests, but so be
>> it. Simply documenting deprecation in the help text is not really
>> deprecating it!
>
> Issuing a warning is likely to break existing applications and break
> tests, which parses the output. By consensus, for JDK9, documenting
> seems to be the best approach.

No one will read that documentation. When this is actually removed, all 
the breakage you fear now will occur then. I'm not sure who was involved 
in this "consensus" - yes a warning make break some things but that just 
means we have to fix them. This is what we have done with deprecated VM 
options. If you deprecate this such that a warning is produced then you 
add that information to the release notes - which will have higher 
visibility than the help doc.

David

> Kumar
>
>
>>
>> David
>>
>>> -Alan
>