Deprecate qiskit.Aer and qiskit.providers.aer
#11439
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These were intended to be deprecated after the release of Aer 0.11, but we apparently never actually got around to it. This fully deprecates the `qiskit.Aer` object, along with imports from `qiskit.providers.aer`, as we will be removing those completely in Qiskit 1.0. The namespace loaders in `qiskit.namespace` will also be removed in Qiskit 1.0, but I have not marked these with deprecation warnings because: - we need to continue using them to effect the deprecations of the imports. - they have never been documented as public interface, so are a private implementation detail. All the use of `qiskit.providers.aer` in Terra and its tests is replaced with `qiskit_aer`. This name is only available from Aer 0.11, but in practice, Aer 0.10 already does not work with Qiskit 0.46 (fails during import), so this change does not affect the working set of Aer versions. I haven't touched old imports of IBMQ, because that package is already completely deprecated and we should be removing all attempted use of it from Qiskit 1.0, because that code would never be able to succeed.
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Changelog: Deprecation
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With Aer 0.13 removing the capability, this is not something we will be able to support moving forwards. This deprecates the functionality, in preparation for its full removal in Qiskit 1.0.
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Overall this LGTM. At the time we added the namespace import redirect I think we discussed just leaving qiskit.providers.aer -> qiskit_aer in perpetuity because it didn't have any real cost just the qiskit.namespace module. I think removing it for Qiskit 1.0.0 makes sense though if we're going to do it.
Just a couple small comments inline.
| @@ -55,14 +54,7 @@ def is_aer_provider_available(): | |||
| Returns: | |||
| bool: True if simulator executable is available | |||
| """ | |||
| # TODO: HACK FROM THE DEPTHS OF DESPAIR AS AER DOES NOT WORK ON MAC | |||
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How long as this been here? Aer has worked on mac for a really long time now...
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commit b2bbb3f05968f3cadc2993ed66123077d80026ef
Author: Jay M. Gambetta <[email protected]>
Date: Fri Dec 28 17:32:27 2018 -0500
Remove legacy simulators (#1615)
so not too long, you know
| should instead use the same object from the ``qiskit_aer`` namespace, which is a drop-in | ||
| replacement. | ||
| - | | ||
| Importing from ``qiskit.providers.aer`` is deprecated and will stop working in Qiskit 1.0. You |
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Did we have a deprecation warning for the namespace hooks in general? Not that it hurts to do this explicitly because we're deprecating the backwards compat import machinery in this PR.
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What kind of statements do you mean, sorry?
If you mean the objects in qiskit.namespace themselves, I haven't put deprecations on them a) we need to use them for the whole length of their existence so would trigger warnings by our regular use of them (or we'd have to wait another cycle to deprecate), and b) they're not public per our policy (there's no documentation of qiskit.namespace).
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For linking purposes: at the time, we discussed whether to make qiskit.namespace explicitly private, but equally didn't make a positive decision that it would be public per the deprecation policy, we just didn't call it qiskit._namespace. By the intended current terms of the deprecation policy, it doesn't count as public because it's not documented, though caveat: we never merged #11205 on Terra, and then the deprecation policy got moved to DEPRECATIONS.md on Terra in #11218 in its old form, so we need to resurrect #11205 here.
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I meant #11223 which implicitly covered qiskit.providers.aer at least in my head, the qiskit.namespace machinery was just an explicit exception to that.
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I'm keen to get rid of |
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That does raise a concern for me in rustworkx where we use the same basic code to redirect imports from |
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To be fair, I'm 100% certain it'll still be possible to do this, I just think we'll have to go look at the Fixed the dodgy deprecation message in 4add053. |
Summary
These were intended to be deprecated after the release of Aer 0.11, but we apparently never actually got around to it. This fully deprecates the
qiskit.Aerobject, along with imports fromqiskit.providers.aer, as we will be removing those completely in Qiskit 1.0.The namespace loaders in
qiskit.namespacewill also be removed in Qiskit 1.0, but I have not marked these with deprecation warnings because:All the use of
qiskit.providers.aerin Terra and its tests is replaced withqiskit_aer. This name is only available from Aer 0.11, but in practice, Aer 0.10 already does not work with Qiskit 0.46 (fails during import), so this change does not affect the working set of Aer versions.I haven't touched old imports of IBMQ, because that package is already completely deprecated and we should be removing all attempted use of it from Qiskit 1.0, because that code would never be able to succeed.
Details and comments
See #5089 for the history of these deprecations.