The ap_verify framework was originally designed to handle both nightly CI runs and occasional larger runs. We created one dataset, ap_verify_hits2015, to support the latter case. However, developments since then (in particular, the introduction of BPS) have shifted ap_verify's purpose to CI alone. The AP team has not performed an ap_verify run with ap_verify_hits2015 in over two years, but we still try to keep it in sync with its more frequently used CI subset.

We would like to retire the ap_verify_hits2015 package from active support. Since there may be third parties still using the dataset, we propose doing this through the standard deprecation procedure (i.e., waiting for one major version before removal), and moving the package into lsst-dm/legacy- once removed. Since ap_verify_hits2015 is not a code package and is never imported, we'll have to find some other way of getting the deprecation warning out (possibly injecting the warning into the dataset-specific configs?).

This proposal does not affect the two CI packages, ap_verify_ci_hits2015 and ap_verify_ci_cosmos_pdr2.