I share your concern that --placement local will be abused if it is available. However, without this, testing scripts for hardware deployment or against limited size clouds become incredibly complex. I'd be comfortable with a WARNING: --placement on the command line is deprecated type of message once there is an alternative that allows making use of limited resources, but until then, I think we have to have at least *some* story other than "go buy more hardware".
I share your concern that --placement local will be abused if it is available. However, without this, testing scripts for hardware deployment or against limited size clouds become incredibly complex. I'd be comfortable with a WARNING: --placement on the command line is deprecated type of message once there is an alternative that allows making use of limited resources, but until then, I think we have to have at least *some* story other than "go buy more hardware".