hugo/docs/content/en/troubleshooting/deprecation.md

title	description	categories	keywords	menu	weight
Deprecation	The Hugo project follows a formal and consistent process to deprecate functions, methods, and configuration settings.	troubleshooting		docs parent weight troubleshooting 50	50

When a project deprecates something, they are telling its users:

1. Don't use Thing One anymore.
2. Use Thing Two instead.
3. We're going to remove Thing One at some point in the future.

Think of deprecation as a statement of intent. This Wikipedia article describes common reasons for deprecation:

• The feature has been replaced by a more powerful alternative.
• The feature contains a design flaw.
• The feature is considered extraneous, and will be removed in the future in order to simplify the system as a whole.
• A future version of the software will make major structural changes, making it impossible or impractical to support older features.
• Standardization or increased consistency in naming.
• A feature that once was available only independently is now combined with its co-feature.

After the project team deprecates something in code, Hugo will:

1. Log an INFO message for 6 minor releases¹
2. Log a WARN message for another 6 minor releases
3. Log an ERROR message and fail the build thereafter

To see the INFO messages, you must use the --logLevel command line flag:

hugo --logLevel info

To limit the output to deprecation notices:

hugo --logLevel info | grep deprecate

Run the above command every time you upgrade Hugo.

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1. For example, v0.1.1 => v0.2.0 is a minor release. ↩︎