proposal: remove lints deprecated for 3.0

[pq]

dart-lang/linter#3879 tracks issues that are being discussed for deprecation in 3.0.

Currently 4 3 of them are core/recommended.

• deprecate: always_require_non_null_named_parameters [recommended]
• deprecate: null_closures [recommended]
• deprecate prefer_equal_for_default_values [recommended] (as of 2.19 analyzer produces a diagnostic; discussion in handle prefer_equal_for_default_values deprecation in 2.19 #92)
• Deprecate iterable_contains_unrelated_type and list_remove_unrelated_type linter#3893 [core] (in favor of collection_methods_unrelated_type -- Add collection_methods_unrelated_type to core #93) (DELAYED)

There's an open question about null_closures so that may come off the list. (EDIT: yes.)

Two things I'd like to establish:

• Agreement. Do we agree with this list of deprecations? (Are there more?)
• Mechanics. Having agreed, we should settle on how we want to do a new package:lints release. (Do we want to have version scoped releases? That is, a release with an SDK lower bound of 3.0.0 or similar?)

/cc @mit-mit @munificent @lrhn @natebosch @jakemac53 @goderbauer for feedback

/fyi @jacob314 @bwilkerson @srawlins

[srawlins]

null_closures is still necessary in Dart 3.0. For example, Iterable.firstWhere's orElse parameter is nullable.

[pq]

Regarding mechanics, how about a 2.1.0 release with lints removed and a new lower bound like this:

   sdk: '>=3.0.0-0 <4.0.0'

(EDIT: talking to @srawlins, we may want a release before that includes enable_null_safety (assuming we agree on #97?)

(EDIT 2: see below for a new proposal that does not bump the lower bound.)

[srawlins]

I don't think there is anything breaking about removing lints from lists. I think that could be 2.1.0, and the SDK does not need to be bumped. It can stay at sdk: '>=2.17.0 <3.0.0 in order to benefit people already running on null safety.

Perhaps that is not safe because they could have opted-out files, running Dart 2.17, and those opted out files would no longer receive the benefit of those lint rules.

[pq]

EDIT: new proposal.

Having thought about this some more and talking it over with @bwilkerson at length, I have a new simpler proposal:

A 2.1.0 release with lints removed and no SDK lower bound changes. (SDK lower bound is not really want we want to predicate removing lints on anyway -- what makes them irrelevant is the library language version and if you can still opt back to pre 2.12, the SDK lower bound won't work as intended.)

Risk. There is a risk that folks who have opted libraries to pre-2.12 will lose some coverage. (I expect this to be extremely uncommon in practice.)

How do folks feel?

/cc @mit-mit @munificent @lrhn @natebosch @jakemac53 @goderbauer @jacob314 @bwilkerson @srawlins

[srawlins]

Would this be after we finish the internal migration? E.g. always_require_non_null_named_parameters is used internally.

[bwilkerson]

Is it enabled by including one of these lint sets? If so, then we'd need to enable it independently of these lint sets before removing it from the lint set. If not, then there's no reason to wait.

[srawlins]

Haha good question Brian. Total brain fart. We don't use these lint sets so just ignore me. 😄 No problem for internal use.

[jakemac53]

Have we considered just making the lints themselves be no-ops based on language version? It seems to me that they will still have value for a long time given packages may be on an old language version for quite some time (O(years)?).

[bwilkerson]

Yes. But we want to let people know that they can remove them from their analysis options files just to help keep the world a little cleaner. But we can't let them know if they're still in the core, recommended, or flutter sets because then there would be too much noise. Hence the desire to remove them from these sets.

[pq]

@jakemac53 that's essentially what we've been doing but to Brian's point there's some value in tidying up. Also, to be super clear, these lints are only valuable in libraries that opt back pre 2.12 which we're really discouraging in >=3.0.

[goderbauer]

The suggestion in #95 (comment) SGTM. Presumably, we'd also do a 2.1.0 release of flutter_lints that just bumps the package:lints version to 2.1.0? Are there any additional lints in flutter_lints that have become obsolete and should be removed as well? The list of those lints is here: https://github.com/flutter/packages/blob/main/packages/flutter_lints/lib/flutter.yaml. I believe these are all still relevant even with Dart 3.0. Just double-checking...

[goderbauer]

Actually, flutter_lints already specifies lints: ^2.0.0 in its pubspec, so it would pick up a 2.1.0 release of package:lint already. Should we still do a release to bump that dependency to 2.1.0 explicitly?

[pq]

@goderbauer: I think all the flutter-specific lints are good. As for a version bump, I don't know if it's necessary but don't feel really strongly either way!

[jakemac53]

Yes. But we want to let people know that they can remove them from their analysis options files just to help keep the world a little cleaner. But we can't let them know if they're still in the core, recommended, or flutter sets because then there would be too much noise. Hence the desire to remove them from these sets.

I wouldn't expect to get a lint for an included set of lints - the lint should only show up where they are explicitly included (so the core lint sets themselves). We could add a comment there for the reasoning and call it good?

[bwilkerson]

I think that's a great idea, and after talking with Phil that's the approach we've decided to take. Thanks!

[pq]

💯 Thanks @jakemac53!

[mit-mit]

@pq are you working on this one?

[pq]

There's a question about dart-lang/linter#3893 to @srawlins. Once we resolve that we can push ahead here I think.

[pq]

OK. Revisiting this, my new thinking is that we only want to remove always_require_non_null_named_parameters for a Dart 3.0 world. It only makes sense pre-2.12 and we can no longer opt back that far. As for prefer_equal_for_default_values it's a no-op in 2.19 and beyond but valuable for libraries opted back earlier. The unrelated type lint deprecation/consolidation has been delayed.

CL coming.

[mit-mit]

@pq is this done?

[pq]

At this point, we just need to land #107 and publish. Since this bumps the lower SDK bound to 3.0.0 I was imagining we'd wait until a time closer to when such an SDK exists but maybe that's silly?

[mit-mit]

@pq with the last beta done, I think we can go ahead and publish?

https://dart.dev/tools/pub/publishing#publishing-prereleases

[pq]

I think so. It sounds like I should land #107 and then publish it as a preview?

[mit-mit]

Commented in #107

[pq]

Thanks all. #107 is landed and we're newly published at https://pub.dev/packages/lints/versions/2.1.0.

Closing as done.