-w deprecation and -F dir= equivalence

Hello, I read in the auditctl manual that -w $path is deprecated and should be replaced by -F path=$path or -F dir=$path. However it seems to me that their behavior is not the same, notably I see auditd (4.0.2) fails to load its rules it $path does not exists. $path may be created later in the system initialization or only after a precise event (eg: /var/run/faillock in a tmpfs and only created at first login). So should I conclude that -w should still be used for paths that may not exists at initialization ? Am I missing something ? Is there a timeline for -w deprecation ? Thanks, -Seth