> Hmm, that's new since I last **needed** to look in the man page for it - don't tell me you look at man pages for stuff you already know how to do, each time you do it ?

I suppose ending up on a mailing list means you're looking for answers,
hence there is by definition something you do *not* know (anymore).
I guess the first step would be to realize you might *have known*, but
not anymore.
IMHO the first step shall ideally be (up-to-date) RTFM if you seek to be
efficient, especially dealing with (others') time.

> <looks on system ...> <looks on another system ...> Looks like "deprecated" was added between ascii and beowulf.
> Checking my next oldest system (Debian Wheezy), I see that it includes CIDR format. Guess it's a while since I last needed to check the man page for that !

I suppose surprises like that happen more often than one thinks!
A common personal example is new options being introduced in a tool in
order to solve something I am (re)trying to work around the hacky/ugly way.

> Perhaps it's time for the relevant package to spit out some notice level logging when it hits deprecated options ?

I can't imagine the volume of information that would produce on system
upgrades, even updates packs.
Unreadable, if you ask me: Too much information = No information, as it
will be discarded.

Happy network configuration,
Bernard (Beer) Rosset
https://rosset.net/