CODEWITHSUNDEEP
swiftmacosswiftuideprecateddeprecation-warning
Patratacus
Patratacus

Reputation: 1791

Can I use a deprecated function (method) in SwiftUI?

I'm developing a macOS app using Xcode 14.0 with Swift 5.7 and SwiftUI. I'm running macOS 12.6 on my MacBook M1 Pro. I need to support at minimum macOS 11.0 which means that there are many new SwiftUI functions I cannot use due to them needing macOS 12.0+. One function that I use quite a bit for SwiftUI layout is overlay(_:alignment:). According to the Apple document, it's deprecated. It's interesting because I'm still able to use it in my code with the setup I described. However, is this going to break the app when deployed if the function is technically deprecated? Apple isn't exactly great with backward compatibility in general and it's also very hard to find out the information about backward compatibility until your app just breaks or gets rejected from the App Store. As mentioned earlier, I can't use the suggested overlay(alignment:content:) because it needs macOS 12.0+.

Maybe I should just drop macOS 11 and require macOS 12 since it's been several years now, but from what I read a lot of users (>70%) are still running macOS 11 based on a survey conducted in 2021. Maybe that's different now that macOS 13 is already out.

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Upvotes: 1

Views: 869

Answers (2)

soundflix
soundflix

Reputation: 2743

It is not strictly neccessary to change old code to conform to this deprecation. As @robmayoff says in his answer, the deprecated version will (probably) not be removed.

I can't back this with official statement, but in my opinion, this modifier change is not more than an update on code readability and API consistency.
To illustrate, I have added the following examples. You can see that having alignment as the second attribute makes it harder to find in code, whereas with the new, it sits nicely with the start of the modifier, and can be followed by a trailing closure containing content.

overlay(_:alignment:) usage:

someView
    .overlay({
        
        // lots of view code lines ...
        
    }, alignment: .leading)

overlay(alignment:content:) usage:

someView
    .overlay(alignment: .leading) {
        
        // lots of view code lines ...
        
    }

Upvotes: 0

rob mayoff
rob mayoff

Reputation: 385500

It's safe to keep using the deprecated version of overlay. Apple won't remove it from SwiftUI for years, if ever.

But if you want to be extra safe, you can write your own modifier that uses the deprecated overlay if the new overlay is not available:

extension View {
    @ViewBuilder
    func overlayWorkaround<V: View>(
        alignment: Alignment = .center,
        @ViewBuilder _ content: () -> V
    ) -> some View {
        if #available(macOS 12, macCatalyst 15, iOS 15, tvOS 15, watchOS 8, *) {
            self.overlay(alignment: alignment, content: content)
        } else {
            self.overlay(content(), alignment: alignment)
        }
    }
}

Upvotes: 5

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