I will give it a try because are plenty of warnings regarding missing parentheses after elixir upgrade (1.4.0-rc.1). All packages generated with mix before elixir 1.4 are using deps inside mix.exs. For example:
warning: variable "deps" does not exist and is being expanded to "deps()", please use parentheses to remove the ambiguity or change the variable name /home/ubuntu/devel/tests/deps/bunt/mix.exs:11