Deprecating Constants (and Classes) in Ruby

Ruby has great tools for deprecating obselete code. One of my favorite techniques is one I rarely see: using const_missing to deprecate constants, and, by extension, classes and modules.

Consider this code:

module MyGem
  class Config
  end
end

At a later time, you decide you would rather name this class MyGem::Configuration. It’s easy enough to change the name, but you may break backwards compatiblity with people who have references to MyGem::Config in their code.

const_missing really comes in handy here:

module MyGem
  class Configuration
  end

  def self.const_missing(const_name)
    super unless const_name == :Config
    warn "`MyGem::Config` has been deprecated. Use `MyGem::Configuration` instead."
    Configuration
  end
end

This allows existing code that references MyGem::Config to continue to work, and warns the user about their use of the deprecated constant.