I concur with espie@'s commit message for r1.119 that I "deserve this."
That said, actually emitting the message "Couldn't change identity..."
would still be preferable.
No.
Adding layers of compatibility for between-release changes makes
little sense. It rescues a few rapid adoptors, but what it mostly
does is: create cruft.
Eventually someone has to delete the cruft. It turns out deleting of
cruft is a difficult process. So it does not get deleted as often as
one expects. So cruft builds up.
An excellent approach to dealing with the problem is to not create it
in the first place.
If this was a vendor operating system with a multi year life cycle
we would certainly follow your proposal... and accept money to maintain
it and eventually delete it... 15 years later... maybe...
