How can I deprecate an entire protocol?

Question

Is it possible to deprecate an entire protocol? I'm using the GCC compiler that is shipped with iOS SDK 5.0 Beta 7.

DEPRECATED_ATTRIBUTE doesn't seem to work.

For example, the following two statements do not compile.

score 59 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 13 '11 at 23:04

59

I haven't tried this myself, but I think that the following syntax should work.

__attribute__ ((deprecated))
@protocol MyProtocol
@end

This parallels the syntax for deprecating an entire interface as well as a single method.

__attribute__ ((deprecated))
@interface MyClass
@end

@interface MyClass2
- (void) method __attribute__((deprecated));
@end

answered Sep 13 '11 at 23:04

Chris Frederick

Huh. Totally didn't think about that. – Hyperbole Sep 13 '11 at 23:21
13

I realize this is old, but just as a sidenote, as of recent Clang versions you can just use: ```__deprecated``` as shorthand for ```__attribute__ ((deprecated))```. – mszaro Apr 03 '14 at 22:39
6

`__deprecated` has nothing to do with clang versions. It's provided by the system headers in /usr/include/sys/cdefs.h. You can also use `__deprecated_msg("A note to the developers using it.")` and the compiler print the message along with the deprecation notice. – Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia Aug 16 '15 at 16:51

1 Answers1