Announcement: Deprecating the use of peakrdl.* namespace packages

[amykyta3]

Importing individual PeakRDL tools using their namespace packages will be deprecated.

What do I need to do?

Change the way you import PeakRDL packages to use the new packaging import name.

For example when using PeakRDL-html, change:

from peakrdl.html import HTMLExporter

to:

from peakrdl_html import HTMLExporter
#           ^ notice the underscore

When will this change take effect?

The new package imports will be available in the following versions:

• peakrdl-html v2.6.0
• peakrdl-ipxact v3.1.0
• peakrdl-uvm v2.1.0

These updates will still retain the ability to import using the old style, but will emit a deprecation warning.
A future release will eventually remove the old import style entirely.

The peakrdl-regblock package will also be changed, but without the deprecation warning or backwards compatibility since it is still in pre-production beta.

Why the change?

Use of namespace packages initially seemed like a nifty way to encapsulate sub-components of the PeakRDL project, but in practice has ended up being pretty cumbersome.
Over the years, it has become clear that the numerous quirks of this packaging style are not worth the effort, and the benefit of using namespace packages is nearly non-existent. More traditional monolithic packaging is easier to maintain and makes development of the upcoming PeakRDL command line application easier.