Reliably removing deprecated code on a scheduled basis.

A new year is approaching, and on the Flutter team, we’re getting ready for a clean start to 2021.

In preparation, we’re going to remove some of the deprecated APIs in the Flutter framework.

Removing deprecations in the Flutter framework isn’t new. I’ve done it myself  in the past. A  quick search shows that deprecations were removed without a defined timeline or schedule because  our deprecation policy doesn’t stipulate when to remove them. Because we want to provide a consistent and reliable experience for our users, we decided to create a standard lifetime for deprecations.

This article discusses our current policies for breaking changes and deprecations, how they’re put into practice, and how they’re evolving to provide a better experience to our users.

#policy #deprecated #flutter #open-source