`initWithFrontViewController` deprecated.

[norswap]

I updated from version 1.0b2 to 2.0.5 (yeah I know... but it was a legacy project). I'm wondering why the method family mentioned in the title are deprecated. I used to subclass PKRevealController. Is that bad form somehow?

[pkluz]

I deprecated them in favor of convenience initializers (class methods). The methods are already fairly verbose and long, and I saw no benefit in bloating the header with lots of possible ways to initialize the controller which might've just confused people and made it less readable. Instead I chose to only recommend the use of the + (instancetype)revealController… class methods.

You're free to still use those methods, as they will not be removed from the internals of the controller itself - only the public visibility might not make the cut in 3.0 which is at least a year off.

Summary:

• Convenience initializers are less text.
• Going from six(!) initializers to just three seems advantageous to both understanding and maintainability.

[norswap]

Still, subclassing is fairly useful in some cases (in my case it was mostly about saving keystrokes and avoiding to have two view controllers where one would do).

What about leaving a single init-style method? It would make subclassing possible, albeit not as convenient as the recommended method.

Also, for anyone interested, here is how to inhibit the warning:

#pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "-Wdeprecated-declarations"
self = [super initWithFrontViewController: XXX
    leftViewController: YYY
    rightViewController: ZZZ
    options: nil];
#pragma GCC diagnostic warning "-Wdeprecated-declarations"