[Twisted-Python] How to handle arguments with undocumented types and argument deprecation

[Adi Roiban]

Hi,

This message is based on https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/5911#comment:14

In twisted/web/http.py we have the addCookie method which has the
'max_age' argument.

In the current code, the max_age is used as just anything which can be
converted into a text.

cookie = cookie +"; Max-Age=%s" % max_age

The latest patch documents max_age as requiring an int and adds tests
for the addCookie method... so to handly Py3 support the code looks
like this:

cookie = cookie + b"; Max-Age=" + intToBytes(max_age)

-----------

Should this code continue to handle str/int/long ?

---------

Is there a way to deprecate a single argument from a method/function?

Since max_age does not comply with the coding convention, can we
deprecated max_age with support for str/int/log and create a new
maxAge argument which only supports bytes.


Thanks!

-- 
Adi Roiban