Deprecation info available about vboxmanage showhdinfo?

[computezrmle]

In older VirtualBox manuals (at least up to v5.0.0) "showhdinfo" is being mentioned as subcommand for vboxmanage.
The recent manual (v6.1.30) as well as "vboxmanage -h" don't mention "showhdinfo" any more.
Instead, "showmediuminfo disk" is suggested to get details about distinct virtual hdds.

Even vboxmanage included in VirtualBox 6.1.30 supports "showhdinfo", e.g. when called from older wrapper scripts.
I wonder whether this support ends sometime in future releases and whether there's an official deprecation message available.


Thanks in advance

[scottgus1]

I looked in the PDF manual for 6.1.30 and "showhdinfo" cannot be found.

You can search the PDF of various manual versions with the link:

https://download.virtualbox.org/virtual ... Manual.pdf

replacing Z.Y.X with the version you want to check on, like this for 6.1.30:

https://download.virtualbox.org/virtual ... Manual.pdf

Use "successive approximation" to reduce the number of manuals you have to check: Start in the middle of the range of manuals, look for "showhdinfo". If it is not found take the earlier half of the set of manuals to test. If it is found, take the later half of manuals to test. Run the test on each successive half of manuals until you find the last one where the word is mentioned.

[mpack]

showmediuminfo is the newest form of the older "showhdinfo" and "showvdiinfo" commands. Since support for the latter commands only cost a couple of extra slots in a command lookup table they are not about to disappear any time soon.

E.g. the old "clonevdi" is still supported even though that was deprecated more than a decade ago.

The "vdi" commands were replaced when VirtualBox started to support third party image formats. The "hd" versions of the commands were replaced as SSDs began to be current technology: plus I believe the devs intend that the commands might in future also apply to non-primary disks, e.g. optical and virtual USB drives.

Personally I find the "medium" form of the commands somewhat verbose. I would have kept the "hd" form as the preferred form even despite the incongruity of applying the command to a DVD.

[computezrmle]

Thanks.

Testing the command shows showhdinfo still works.
The manual may be updated sometime since it mentions showvdiinfo maps to showmediuminfo while showhdinfo has been removed from the manual since v5.1.4.
Even in v6.1.32 published today, page 180.

[mpack]

I would think that all that the manual needs to document now are the current official commands.