DeprecationWarning: pos_bboxes is deprecated, please use "po

Error message

DeprecationWarning: pos_bboxes is deprecated, please use "pos_priors" instead

What it means

Deprecation warning from SamplingResult.pos_bboxes: renamed to pos_priors, since these are the positive prior anchors matched to GT boxes. The property forwards to self.pos_priors and will be removed.

Source

Thrown at mmdet/models/task_modules/samplers/sampling_result.py:132

            if len(gt_bboxes.shape) < 2:
                gt_bboxes = gt_bboxes.view(-1, box_dim)
            self.pos_gt_bboxes = gt_bboxes[self.pos_assigned_gt_inds.long()]

    @property
    def priors(self):
        """torch.Tensor: concatenated positive and negative priors"""
        return cat_boxes([self.pos_priors, self.neg_priors])

    @property
    def bboxes(self):
        """torch.Tensor: concatenated positive and negative boxes"""
        warnings.warn('DeprecationWarning: bboxes is deprecated, '
                      'please use "priors" instead')
        return self.priors

    @property
    def pos_bboxes(self):
        warnings.warn('DeprecationWarning: pos_bboxes is deprecated, '
                      'please use "pos_priors" instead')
        return self.pos_priors

    @property
    def neg_bboxes(self):
        warnings.warn('DeprecationWarning: neg_bboxes is deprecated, '
                      'please use "neg_priors" instead')
        return self.neg_priors

    def to(self, device):
        """Change the device of the data inplace.

        Example:
            >>> self = SamplingResult.random()
            >>> print(f'self = {self.to(None)}')
            >>> # xdoctest: +REQUIRES(--gpu)
            >>> print(f'self = {self.to(0)}')
        """

View on GitHub (pinned to cfd5d3a985)

Solutions

Use sampling_result.pos_priors
Update all three attributes (bboxes/pos_bboxes/neg_bboxes) to the priors naming
Update custom code consuming SamplingResult

Example fix

# before
pos_rois = sampling_result.pos_bboxes
# after
pos_rois = sampling_result.pos_priors

Defensive patterns

Strategy: type-guard

Validate before calling

assert hasattr(result, 'pos_priors')

Type guard

def get_pos_priors(result):
    return result.pos_priors if hasattr(result, 'pos_priors') else result.pos_bboxes

Prevention

Use pos_priors in custom sampler code
Centralize SamplingResult field access behind helpers

When it happens

Trigger: Accessing sampling_result.pos_bboxes in custom sampler logic, tests, or visualization code that inspects positive samples.

Common situations: Custom RoI align heads sampling positives; older tutorials referencing pos_bboxes.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of open-mmlab/mmdetection@cfd5d3a985 (2026-08-27). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8c93d08a12cdd1b8. Report an issue: GitHub.