RefResolver is deprecated, but replacement is unstable

[drsybren]

Hi folks,

I want to integrate jsonschema in the application I'm working on. It's a widely-used desktop application, and so I do not want it to show deprecation warnings on the console. This means that ideally I wouldn't use jsonschema.RefResolver (deprecated since 238e711), but rather use the new referencing package. However, the latter is still in beta, and its API is explicitly documented as not stable.

The current release of jsonschema seems to add referencing as a mandatory dependency. Inclusion of beta-stage packages in a package marked "Production/Stable" seems dubious.

What is the recommended approach, in cases where depending on beta-stage software is not desirable? It also feels dodgy to introduce a new package (jsonschema) to our application and immediately start using an API that is already marked deprecated.

Thanks for any guidance.

[Julian]

However, the latter is still in beta, and its API is explicitly documented as not stable.

(Using a registry by passing it to a validator is not unstable, what's marked unstable is that there's a specific known change which needs to eventually be made to dynamic retrieval callables. If you're not dynamically retrieving schemas, it won't affect you, and that change would be made with deprecation warnings anyhow, given referencing has been out for a few years now.)

What is the recommended approach, in cases where depending on beta-stage software is not desirable?

It also feels dodgy to introduce a new package (jsonschema) to our application and immediately start using an API that is already marked deprecated.

Not only is it deprecated, it's been known to be functionally broken for many years, hence writing the replacement! So the recommendation is definitely to use referencing. Especially so if you do what anyone should and pin the dependency, though as I say there's no intention of making an immediate backwards compatible change at this point given it's been out for awhile now.

[drsybren]

This sounds like referencing is not in beta any more? Either we can assume it is stable, and thus it could be marked as such, or it's still undergoing known bugfixes etc. and shouldn't be relied on (which is how I read "beta").

[Julian]

It is not undergoing any current breaking changes. There is one known needed future breaking change. That change will be done in a way that does not immediately break any existing uses without a deprecation first (and my parenthetical was mentioning that typical uses as it relates to this library don't usually involve the interface in question there in referencing). No new software should in my opinion use the old, known broken interface. Label that kind of software with whatever label matches that description to you :)