Deprecation question

[etseidl]

I'm preparing to finally remove some functions deprecated back in v53, but a question cropped up with regards to MetadataLoader

arrow-rs/parquet/src/arrow/async_reader/metadata.rs

Lines 89 to 104 in 7211502

	/// An asynchronous interface to load [`ParquetMetaData`] from an async source
	pub struct MetadataLoader<F> {
	/// Function that fetches byte ranges asynchronously
	fetch: F,
	/// The in-progress metadata
	metadata: ParquetMetaData,
	/// The offset and bytes of remaining unparsed data
	remainder: Option<(usize, Bytes)>,
	}
	impl<F: MetadataFetch> MetadataLoader<F> {
	/// Create a new [`MetadataLoader`] by reading the footer information
	///
	/// See [`fetch_parquet_metadata`] for the meaning of the individual parameters
	#[deprecated(since = "53.1.0", note = "Use ParquetMetaDataReader")]
	pub async fn load(mut fetch: F, file_size: usize, prefetch: Option<usize>) -> Result<Self> {

All of the functions in MetadataLoader were deprecated in v53.1.0, and so can be removed in v56.0.0...but MetadataLoader itself was not deprecated. Removing the deprecated functions basically leaves it as a zombie struct with no implementation.

My question is can we totally remove MetadataLoader at this point, or do we have to restart the timer by deprecating the struct and impl and wait until v59 or so?

@alamb

[alamb]

I think it would be fine to remove the whole structure personally, for the reasons you stated

Since the change would not break anything automatically (it will be a major version which requires a manual version increase anyways) I think it will be ok

[etseidl]

Thanks! Back to the wrecking ball 😄

[alamb]