Deprecations

Spring Boot uses @Deprecation annotations and Javadoc tags to indicate that a method, constructor or class will be removed in a future release. As much as possible, deprecated code will remain for at least two subsequent releases. For example, an API marked @deprecated since 2.2.0 would be subject for removal in a 2.4.0 release.

The Javadoc used for deprecations uses the following form:

/**
 * ...
 * @deprecated since <version> for removal in <version> in favor of <alternative>.
 */

Very occasionally we will also deprecate code without an alternative. For example, we may choose to remove support for a third-party project that is no longer maintained. In those situations, the following form is used:

/**
 * ...
 * @deprecated since <version> for removal in <version> <reason>
 */

The version numbers documented are of the form <major>.<minor>.<patch>.