Deprecate the unit and duration attributes (#13224)

* Deprecate the unit and duration attributes

This commit deprecates the unit and duration attributes for
QuantumCircuit and Instruction. These attributes will be removed in
Qiskit 2.0 as they're not needed anymore and are adding a lot of
complexity to the circuit data model as they're mutable state and extra
memory slots that we need to keep around. The better model for tracking
instruction duration is in the Target as it's inherently a property of
the backend running the instructions.

For the unittests this commit globally ignores the deprecation warning
raised by this commit because internally we access the now deprecated
access quite frequently as we need to check it when adding instructions
to circuits to populate the rust data model.

* Apply suggestions from code review

Co-authored-by: Elena Peña Tapia <[email protected]>

---------

Co-authored-by: Elena Peña Tapia <[email protected]>

qiskit/circuit/instruction.py

@@ -341,6 +341,7 @@ def add_decomposition(self, decomposition):
         sel.add_equivalence(self, decomposition)
 
     @property
+    @deprecate_func(since="1.3.0", removal_timeline="in Qiskit 2.0.0", is_property=True)
     def duration(self):
         """Get the duration."""
         return self._duration
@@ -351,6 +352,7 @@ def duration(self, duration):
         self._duration = duration
 
     @property
+    @deprecate_func(since="1.3.0", removal_timeline="in Qiskit 2.0.0", is_property=True)
     def unit(self):
         """Get the time unit of duration."""
         return self._unit

qiskit/circuit/quantumcircuit.py

@@ -1145,17 +1145,35 @@ def __init__(
         for var, initial in declarations:
             self.add_var(var, initial)
 
-        self.duration: int | float | None = None
-        """The total duration of the circuit, set by a scheduling transpiler pass.  Its unit is
-        specified by :attr:`unit`."""
-        self.unit = "dt"
-        """The unit that :attr:`duration` is specified in."""
+        self._duration = None
+        self._unit = "dt"
         self.metadata = {} if metadata is None else metadata
         """Arbitrary user-defined metadata for the circuit.
- 
+
         Qiskit will not examine the content of this mapping, but it will pass it through the
         transpiler and reattach it to the output, so you can track your own metadata."""
 
+    @property
+    @deprecate_func(since="1.3.0", removal_timeline="in Qiskit 2.0.0", is_property=True)
+    def duration(self):
+        """The total duration of the circuit, set by a scheduling transpiler pass.  Its unit is
+        specified by :attr:`unit`."""
+        return self._duration
+
+    @duration.setter
+    def duration(self, value: int | float | None):
+        self._duration = value
+
+    @property
+    @deprecate_func(since="1.3.0", removal_timeline="in Qiskit 2.0.0", is_property=True)
+    def unit(self):
+        """The unit that :attr:`duration` is specified in."""
+        return self._unit
+
+    @unit.setter
+    def unit(self, value):
+        self._unit = value
+
     @classmethod
     def _from_circuit_data(cls, data: CircuitData, add_regs: bool = False) -> typing.Self:
         """A private constructor from rust space circuit data."""

releasenotes/notes/deprecate-unit-duration-48b76c957bac5691.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+---
+deprecations_circuits:
+  - |
+    The :attr:`.QuantumCircuit.unit` and :attr:`.QuantumCircuit.duration`
+    attributes have been deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 2.0.0. These
+    attributes were used to track the estimated duration and unit of that
+    duration to execute on the circuit. However, the values of these attributes
+    were always limited, as they would only be properly populated if the
+    transpiler were run with the correct settings. The duration was also only a
+    guess based on the longest path on the sum of the duration of
+    :class:`.DAGCircuit` and wouldn't ever correctly account for control flow
+    or conditionals in the circuit.
+  - |
+    The :attr:`.Instruction.duration` and :attr:`.Instruction.unit` attributes
+    have been deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 2.0.0. These attributes
+    were used to attach a custom execution duration and unit for that duration
+    to an individual instruction. However, the source of truth of the duration
+    of a gate is the :class:`.BackendV2` :class:`.Target` which contains
+    the duration for each instruction supported on the backend. The duration of
+    an instruction is not something that's typically user adjustable and is
+    an immutable property of the backend. If you were previously using this
+    capability to experiment with different durations for gates you can
+    mutate the :attr:`.InstructionProperties.duration` field in a given
+    :class:`.Target` to set a custom duration for an instruction on a backend
+    (the unit is always in seconds in the :class:`.Target`).

test/utils/base.py

@@ -156,6 +156,28 @@ def setUpClass(cls):
             module="qiskit_aer",
         )
 
+        # Remove these four filters in Qiskit 2.0.0 when we remove unit and duration
+        warnings.filterwarnings(
+            "ignore",
+            category=DeprecationWarning,
+            message=r".*The property.*qiskit.circuit.instruction.Instruction.unit.*",
+        )
+        warnings.filterwarnings(
+            "ignore",
+            category=DeprecationWarning,
+            message=r".*The property.*qiskit.circuit.instruction.Instruction.duration.*",
+        )
+        warnings.filterwarnings(
+            "ignore",
+            category=DeprecationWarning,
+            message=r".*The property.*qiskit.circuit.quantumcircuit.QuantumCircuit.unit.*",
+        )
+        warnings.filterwarnings(
+            "ignore",
+            category=DeprecationWarning,
+            message=r".*The property.*qiskit.circuit.quantumcircuit.QuantumCircuit.duration.*",
+        )
+
         # Safe to remove once `FakeBackend` is removed (2.0)
         warnings.filterwarnings(
             "ignore",  # If "default", it floods the CI output