Difference in deprecation status for UIImage method stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth:topCapHeight: in doc and header file

Question

I use iOS SDK 6.1. iOS 6.1 doc says the UIImage method stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth:topCapHeight: is deprecated in iOS 5.0:

Creates and returns a new image object with the specified cap values. (Deprecated in iOS 5.0. Deprecated. Use the resizableImageWithCapInsets: instead, specifying cap insets such that the interior is a 1x1 area.)

See also the online iOS doc.

If we look in the header file of UIImage we can see that there is no preprocessor macro NS_DEPRECATED(5.0) for the method stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth:topCapHeight: defined:

@interface UIImage(UIImageDeprecated) 
// use resizableImageWithCapInsets: and capInsets.
- (UIImage *)stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth:(NSInteger)leftCapWidth topCapHeight:(NSInteger)topCapHeight;
@property(nonatomic,readonly) NSInteger leftCapWidth;   // default is 0. if non-zero, horiz. stretchable. right cap is calculated as width - leftCapWidth - 1

It seems to be the iOS documentation is wrong. Can someone confirm if this a documentation or programming issue?

Answer 1

This is still the case with Xcode 6.1 (iOS 8.1).

To me this looks like a programming issue. As you showed with that code snippet, they don't have the NS_DEPRECATED_IOS() on the method declaration. Instead they put all those methods into an UIImage Extension. Behind the scenes, they probably do something with the UIImageDeprecated extension, like deprecating all the method/properties that are declared in it. This means that the NS_DEPRECATED_IOS() macro probably adds the warning for you in Xcode.

I would file a bug report with Apple, because as a developer, it's very annoying when Apple deprecates something, and doesn't tell us.