Is "NameVirtualHost" necessary?

Up to today I used name-based virtual hosting, but without the NameVirtualHost directive. It worked.

Now, I read about the directive, and added it — no change. So, is NameVirtualHost really necessary at all, or will Apache 2.4 set this automatically, when not set?

Ok, it really seems to be not necessary anymore:

Nov 10 13:55:05 hostname apache2[1718]: Starting web server: apache2: NameVirtualHost has no effect and will be removed in the next release /etc/apache2/ports.conf:6