End-of-Life Components
5/10/2007
An end-of-life component is an obsolete component that has been set to the end-of-life state. A component is set to end-of-life rather than deleted, so that it remains available for use with existing configurations and can fulfill the dependencies of existing components.
End-of-life components can be replaced with other components by using branch resources. A branch resource specifies the version of the replacement component and optionally a minimum required revision. If an end-of-life component is added to a configuration, its replacement components are pulled in during the first dependency check. An end-of-life component can be edited, for example to change its branch resources, but it cannot be reactivated.
The following table shows how the number of branch resources impacts the end-of-life component.
| Number of branch resources specified by an end-of-life component | Result |
|---|---|
None |
The component has no replacement. |
One |
The component is replaced by a single specified component. |
Multiple |
The component is replaced by all of the specified components. |
End-of-life components and branch resources can be used to divide components into two or more replacements, as described in the preceding table. They can also be used to fuse multiple components into one new component by setting each of the multiple components to end-of-life and giving each of them a branch resource that points to the single new component.
End-of-life components have a revision value of the current revision plus 100,000. In the development tools, an end-of-life component is displayed with the current revision plus "(EOL)", for example, TCP/IP Driver [Version1, R73 (EOL)]. In this example, the actual revision value of the component is 100,073. If an end-of-life component is edited, its revision number is incremented. For example, the TCP/IP end-of-life driver would increment from revision 100,073 to 100,074.