Overwrite parameter in ascii writers

This issue is a follow-up comment / question to #5007 for @taldcroft and @evertrol .

We use table.write(filename, format='ascii.ecsv') in several places in Gammapy. Now I’m getting the AstropyDeprecationWarning. I can’t add the overwrite=True in Gammapy, because we (obviously) still support Astropy 1.2.

Is there a way for us to write the code so that it works on Astropy 1.2 and 1.3 and doesn’t raise deprecation warnings on 1.3+ all the time?

If yes, could you please let me know and add that info to the changelog entry? If no, could you please be more specific in the changelog when you plan to raise an error here? (It currently says “In a future version this will be changed …”)

Just to be clear: I’m +1 for your change towards consistency in Astropy. Thank you for implementing it.

[cdeil]

@joleroi - This is expected, overwrite doesn’t exist in Astropy 1.2.

For now I suggest you put this as a workaround (suggested by @evertrol above):

try:
    table.write(filename, format='ascii.ecsv', overwrite=True)
except TypeError:
    table.write(filename, format='ascii.ecsv')

and then in a few weeks update to Astropy 1.3 when it comes out and remove that workaround.

[cdeil]

OK, closing this issue now. Thanks all for the help!