Why is convenient asList() deprecated in favor of verbose asInstanceOf(InstanceOfAssertFactories.LIST)?

[NadChel]

Why is the convenient asList() deprecated in favor of the verbose asInstanceOf(InstanceOfAssertFactories.LIST) in org.assertj.core.api.AbstractAssert? All the former does is literally calling the latter while also allowing for cleaner client code

What are the reasons behind that decision?

AssertJ 3.25.3

[scordio]

It's mostly a design decision to draw a clear line for maintenance.

In short, asList is a historical method introduced before asInstanceOf/InstanceOfAssertFactories were available.

Given that asList is not type-safe (#3105) and many other related methods are not offered today (#1020), we wanted to draw the line knowing that we provide over 80 base factories plus more than 20 type-safe ones with InstanceOfAssertFactories.

About verbosity, a static import can of course help:

asInstanceOf(LIST)

However, I agree InstanceOfAssertFactory tends to be verbose so we'll look at improving the naming in version 4 (#3425).