See Deprecation Working Group for a high-level description of the Deprecation and Removal process and information.

Although we may use this page internally as an early scratch area for proposing and evaluating items to remove, eventually it should follow the process defined in OEP-21.

DEPR tickets

OEP-21 recommends filing a DEPR ticket for each technology to be deprecated. We keep a dynamic table of those tickets here:

DEPR tickets coming up on removal

The rest of this document below provides a scratch area for early discovery and evaluation of an item for deprecation and removal.

Evaluation Rubric

Ideally, all "deprecated" code should be on a progressing path to "removal". OEP-21 defines a clear process for this. However, given the already large amount of deprecated code that we have now accumulated (prior to defining the OEP process), we can use Tech Debt metrics to prioritize this list. The Contagion and Impact columns are used for this.

Contagion

How likely is it to spread (via interfaces, copy-pasting, discovery)?
If well-contained, the cost to fix it later compared to now is basically identical. Its impact becomes a higher criterion for when to fix.
If highly contagious, it becomes harder to fix and its impact tends to increase.

Impact

User-facing issues (bugs, missing features, unexpected behavior)
Developer-facing issues (slower implementation, workflow issues, higher cognitive load, more things to upgrade)

Fix Cost

Estimated effort on making the fix.
Include the cost of actually deploying the fix.

Priorities based on Rubric

This spreadsheet prioritizes the below items based on the above rubric.

Items proposed for Deprecation/Removal

Category	Deprecated Code	Still in use?	Places where it's in use (if known)	Viable non-deprecated alternative?	Contagion (1-5)	Impact (1-5)	Fix Cost (1-5)	Removal Status
Authentication	~~External Auth~~	~~Yes (only by MIT)~~	~~MITx uses CAS, which is only in external-auth.~~	~~third_party_auth~~	2	3 ~~(preventing removal of old login/reg)~~	2	~~We have DEPR-6 for this. Have MIT's blessing.~~ ~~Studio redirects to LMS instead of maintaining a separate login and registration flow.~~
	~~Old login & registration~~	~~Yes~~	~~Open edX and external auth paths.~~ ~~Still default.~~	~~Logistration API~~	4 ~~(default, fixes are accidentally made to old one)~~	5	3	~~by Diana Huang as part of /wiki/spaces/HACK/pages/600375541~~ ~~PR: https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/pull/18321~~
	django-oauth2-provider (DOP) / OpenID Connect	Yes	OAuth clients, which should be removed if inactive and shifted to DOT if active most of our IDAs are using DOP	django-oauth2-toolkit (DOT)	2	3	5	See /wiki/spaces/PLAT/pages/160912480.
	EdxRestApiClient	Yes	All over	OAuthAPIClient (from same package)	3	3	2	Uses Slumber, which isn't supported any longer.
APIs	~~Mobile's old video locker APIs~~	~~Yes~~	~~latent code in mobile apps - need to be removed (Jira ticket(s) exist somewhere)~~	~~Course Blocks API~~	3 ~~(since REST API)~~	2	2	~~Mobile apps updated to use the new Course Blocks API 3 years ago. They just need to remove references and latent code to the old API.~~ ~~Discovery needed to make sure that there isn't data that the apps are relying on.~~ LEARNER-2764 - Getting issue details... STATUS LEARNER-5244 - Getting issue details... STATUS
APIs	Old Discussions API	Yes	Desktop view of Discussions	Newer Discussions API (used by Mobile)	2	2	4
Frontend	RequireJS	Yes	edx-platform, edx-mktg	webpack, JS	1	5	3	Can be done incrementally - on a page-by-page basis.
	Backbone	Yes	edx-platform, edx-mktg	React	2	5	5
	UI Pattern Library / edx-pattern-library	Yes	edx-platform, insights, ecomerce, other repos	Bootstrap	2	3	3	Hard to (1) know which HTML elements are used by pattern library versus not - since there's no namespacing, (2) colors/fonts/etc are different. INCR-43 - Getting issue details... STATUS
	edX-ui-toolkit	Yes	edx-platform, insights	Paragon	2	3	4	Re-platforming work by Arch Squad means that we will be rewriting front-end code
	FontAwesome webfonts	Yes		FontAwesome SVG	3	1	2	SVG is smaller size and other benefits. This involves porting from FA 4 to 5, plus using new react bindings. (in paragon or manually)
Notifications	Notifier	Yes	By Discussions	edx-ACE	2	1	2	ON HOLD. Open Source community has been building on it. Has to run inefficient queries on a badly optimized DB. Product has said that we can't remove this until its functionality is duplicated elsewhere.
Notifications	edx-Notifications	Yes	By Yonkers	edx-ACE	2	1	1	ON HOLD. edX has agreed to own this and it can't be removed until either (1) our forked Open edX hosted instance goes away or (2) ACE reaches complete feature parity with it. (Notifications tray and in-browser notifications channel).
Courseware	Old Mongo	Yes (a little)	Old production courses, check with community, units tests still use the old modulestore	Yes (SplitMongo)	3	3	3	DEPR-58 - Getting issue details... STATUS We have a doc on a potential /wiki/spaces/~dormsbee/pages/525861934 for when the time comes. # of course runs using old mongo: 615 We will want a backwards compatible release that enables migration for Open Source installations to Split (and then probably BlockStore).
	XModule	Yes	some edX learning components: video, HTML, CAPA problem, etc.	XBlock	1	4	5	Discovery Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t2P9i2BZKYf_pW61m Unification of descriptors and classes, conversion of handlers, serialization is different. Can shave off some of the more painful side of things in smaller chunks.
	lti_module.py	?	on edx.org in a lot of older courses	xblock-lti-consumer	1	2	2	It's marked as deprecated in module/class doc strings.
	~~OfficeMix~~	~~Low use, errors in existing blocks~~	~~OfficeMix is retired/no longer supported by Microsoft~~		1	2	2	~~Removed in instructor docs (DOC-3973).~~ ~~This code is installed remotely.~~ ~~The endpoint that it contacts no longer exists, so we can be heavy-handed about removing it.~~
	Course Experience waffle flags	?			1	?	?	Feature Toggle reports would help. Could be used for certain courses in Prod or Edge.
Features	~~Microsites~~	~~Yes~~	~~used in Open edX~~	~~Sites/SiteConfiguration~~	1	2	1	~~What does the migration look like?~~
	Shopping cart	Yes. Used by (a) donations from dashboard and (b) Edge.		Ecommerce service	?	?	?	DEPR-43 - Getting issue details... STATUS NR stats on Prod: shoppingcart.views:donate - 345x shoppingcart.views:show_receipt - 111x shoppingcart.views:postpay_callback - 88x
	VerifiedTrackCohort	Yes	by 229 courses	Enrollment Track Partition	1	1	1	It's deprecated. Need to migrate the 229 courses. Removal work was investigated by the Masters squad with tasks captured at VerifiedTrackCohortRemoval.
	~~Learner Analytics Dashboard~~	~~No, for a diff paid experiment that is over~~	~~Unknown~~	~~The existing progress page~~	1	1	1	~~Implemented for a diff paid experiment that is now over. Most of this is a giant hack that should go away.~~ ~~https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/tree/master/openedx/features/learner_analytics~~
Infrastructure	~~Datadog~~	~~No. edX devs don't use this anymore~~			2	2	1	~~Dependency that does not work with Python 3, so we need to get rid of this.~~ ~~In progress~~ DEPR-9 - Getting issue details... STATUS
	track.backends.django.TrackingLog	Maybe Open edX consumers (Stanford?)	Not in edx.org		1	2	1	Can be pulled out and put into a separate installable repo/app, probably.
	~~Lettuce Tests~~	~~Yes~~	~~edx-platform testing~~	~~bok-choy~~	1	3	3	~~ON HOLD. Replace both with consumer contract tests on the roadmap.~~ ~~Can probably remove tests that are not useful any longer entirely.~~
	Dark Lang	Yes	edx-platform + IDAs	N/A				Currently there isn't a replacement that exists that duplicates this functionality planned or existing.
	~~Opaque Key's deprecated methods~~	~~Yes~~						~~This is only the methods from_deprecated_string and to_deprecated_string. We are not removing the old "org/course/num" slash format.~~
	Haystack	Yes	Notes and Discovery ...?	Pure elasticsearch	2	5	3	Haystack is forcing us to stay on an ancient version of elasticsearch. And haystack itself is no longer maintained. We should just use direct elasticsearch instead of the haystack abstraction layer.
	display_name_with_default_escaped	Yes	edx-platform, edx-microsite, edx-themes	display_name_with_default See instructions here.	1 (linter stops spread)	1	2	Github search finds 32 usages. Not sure if this is used by the community.
	edx-ops/baked-config-secure	Yes	analytics jenkins jobs	analytics-secure	1	2	2	Stu and Joe have thought about what it would take to delete the repo.

Removed Prior to DEPR process

Click here to expand...

Deprecated Code	Still in use?	Places where it's in use (if known)	Viable non-deprecated alternative?	Contagion (1-5)	Impact (1-5)	Removal Status
Course Structures	Yes	Studio's unsupported blocks, CCX	Yes (modulestore, Course Blocks)	3	3	REMOVED, by Arch Squad
Annotations XModules	No		Notes	1	1	REMOVED, by Harvard. There's a PR to remove it. We're just waiting for Hawthorn to be cut before moving forward with it. It will delete over 40K lines from edx-platform. Merged in https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/pull/18560.
CoffeeScript	No		Pure Javascript			REMOVED by Learner team

Open edX Community

Deprecation/Removal Evaluation

DEPR tickets

Evaluation Rubric

Priorities based on Rubric

Items proposed for Deprecation/Removal

Removed Prior to DEPR process