Deprecated Api

ID

go.deprecated_api

Severity

low

Remediation Complexity

medium

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

medium

Resource

Code Smell

Language

Go

Tags

code-style, maintainability

Description

Reports a call to a project-local function whose doc comment marks it as deprecated with the Go convention // Deprecated:. Calling a deprecated function keeps obsolete code alive instead of moving to the replacement named in the notice.

Rationale

go doc and the Go tooling treat a doc-comment paragraph beginning with Deprecated: as a deprecation notice. The check is conservative: it flags only a call that resolves to a same-project function whose own doc comment carries that marker. A call into another package, or one that cannot be resolved, is never flagged because its documentation is not visible at this point.

// Deprecated: use newHash instead.
func oldHash(s string) int { ... }

_ = oldHash("a") // FLAW — calls a deprecated function
_ = newHash("b") // OK — not deprecated

Remediation

Replace the call with the non-deprecated alternative named in the Deprecated: notice. If no caller remains, remove the deprecated function.

References