deprecate property windows_timer_interval

patch by Stefan Miklosovic; reviewed by Ekaterina Dimitrova and Berenguer Blasi for CASSANDRA-17404

CHANGES.txt

@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 4.1
+ * deprecate property windows_timer_interval (CASSANDRA-17404)
  * Expose streaming as a vtable (CASSANDRA-17390)
  * Make startup checks configurable (CASSANDRA-17220)
  * Add guardrail for number of partition keys on IN queries (CASSANDRA-17186)

NEWS.txt

@@ -129,6 +129,9 @@ Deprecation
       in a subsequent major version. This also affects the setters and getters for those properties in the JMX MBean
       `org.apache.cassandra.db:type=StorageService`, which are equally deprecated in favour of the analogous methods
       in the JMX MBean `org.apache.cassandra.db:type=Guardrails`. See CASSANDRA-17195 for further details.
+    - The functionality behind the property `windows_timer_interval` was removed as part of CASSANDRA-16956. The
+      property is still present but it is deprecated and it is just a place-holder to prevent breaking upgrades. This
+      property is expected to be fully removed in the next major release of Cassandra.
 
 4.0
 ===

src/java/org/apache/cassandra/config/Config.java

@@ -473,6 +473,9 @@ public class Config
      */
     public volatile ConsistencyLevel ideal_consistency_level = null;
 
+    @Deprecated
+    public int windows_timer_interval = 0;
+
     @Deprecated
     public String otc_coalescing_strategy = "DISABLED";