deprecate geos.factory.fromstr

[Sergey Fedoseev]

Here's it's definition:

def fromstr(string, **kwargs):
    "Given a string value, returns a GEOSGeometry object."
    return GEOSGeometry(string, **kwargs)

This function is just an alias for GEOSGeometry, so I think it should be deprecated.

[Tim Graham]

Clearly someone thought there was a good reason for it at one point. Did you try looking through commit history and tickets to try to find if that reason is no longer applicable?

[Sergey Fedoseev]

It looks like both GEOSGeometry and fromstr were introduced in ​this commit. ​Here's fromstr definition and ​here's definition of GEOSGeometry. At this point fromstr is just an alias for GEOSGeometry too.

[Tim Graham]

While I agree two ways to do the same thing isn't ideal, I don't see much maintenance overhead in keeping the function. Unless there's a stronger rationale for the deprecation or other GIS contributors believe it's valuable to remove the function, I don't see much advantage to it.

[Claude Paroz]

Let's keep it that way for now.

[Sergey Fedoseev]

I think you underestimate it's maintenance overhead. Anyone who learns GIS internals will face this function and some time will be needed to understand that there is no benefit in using it.
Moreover this function is mentioned in documentation, so user can wrongly suppose that there is some advantage from using this function if geometry should be constructed from string.
In conclusion, even there's no much advantage in deprecation of this function, I don't see any disadvantage in it.

[Tim Graham]

The disadvantage is projects having to update their code for the deprecation.

[Claude Paroz]

What could be done is to lessen the prominence of fromstr in the docs. Only keep the method under Geometry Factories and add a note that it is equivalent to GEOSGeometry(string) or <GeometrySubclass>(string). Feel free to propose a docs patch.

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In 97e1d243:

Refs #25739 -- Lessened the prominence of geos.fromstr() in the docs.

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In 013309ea:

[1.9.x] Refs #25739 -- Lessened the prominence of geos.fromstr() in the docs.

Backport of 97e1d2433085e01696dc2fac8bfbb9c421c82b67 from master

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In 954d631:

[1.8.x] Refs #25739 -- Lessened the prominence of geos.fromstr() in the docs.

Backport of 97e1d2433085e01696dc2fac8bfbb9c421c82b67 from master