[FFmpeg-devel] Request for --disable-deprecated configure option

[Martin Storsjö]

On Thu, 3 Apr 2025, Kacper Michajlow wrote:

> Hello,
>
> It would be nice to have configure time ability to disable all
> `FF_API_*` for testing purposes.
>
> As we know not all code can be marked to emit Wdeprecated.
> Specifically #defines doesn't emit any warning and it's easy to miss
> such depreciation before it's actually removed.
>
> The breakage of course is not big, but the main issue is that the
> current release version of a ffmpeg user won't be compatible with
> ffmpeg after API bump, without any period for transition.
>
> --disable-deprecated could be used for testing and ensuring that
> (next) API bump goes smoothly. For both ffmpeg and its users.

So essentially to configure a build to use the next major API version 
before doing the actual bump?

I've actually mentioned that we should do that (and that we should have a 
FATE instance that continuously tests this, so that we know beforehand 
that our planned next form of the APIs actually works), and I did try 
making a PoC of it at some point, but unfortunately, I think I concluded 
that it was a bit more messy than I had wanted, so I didn't continue 
on it.

See https://github.com/mstorsjo/ffmpeg/commit/next-abi for my PoC.

// Martin