[jkubicek]

For sure, but for this to work you need someone downstream to notice those messages and prioritize the work to migrate off the deprecated code paths. Some teams will respond, but many won't. No matter how loudly you declare that the code is deprecated, you'll still have people using it up to the point it stops working.

It's far better to plan the removal of the code (and the inevitable breaking of downstream users systems) on your own schedule than to let entropy surprise you at some random point in the future.

[locknitpicker]

> For sure, but for this to work you need someone downstream to notice those messages and prioritize the work to migrate off the deprecated code paths.

Deprecation messages show up as compiler warnings. As a package maintainer, your job does not include taking over project management work in projects that depend on your package.