Re: options to retire?

[Jim Meyering]

Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
> Looking in the source code, there are several deprecated/obsolescent
> options slated for removal that are still present:

Thanks for bringing that up.

> du -m: FIXME: remove in 2005

My philosophy is that deprecated options should be undocumented,
and ideally, their use should should provoke a diagnostic for
at least a year (in a stable release) before removal.

du's -m doesn't provoke a diagnostic, so I'll add one
and push the removal date to 2006.  Same for --kilobytes
in ls, du, and df.

These two do, so I'll remove them now.

> stat --link: FIXME: remove in 2003
> tail --allow-missing: FIXME: remove in 2005; use --retry instead

od's -F option doesn't provoke a diagnostic either, but I may remove
it regardless, since it was probably used only rarely.

Feedback welcome.

> There are a few other options marked obsolescent, but without a timeline
> for removal (such as df --kilobytes, od -F, etc.)