Re: Idea for determining what users use

["Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/emacs@rum.cs.yale.edu>]

> We have no good way to determine if anyone still uses a feature.
> Maybe we can create one.
> 
> Imagine a function called note-feature-used.
> You call it like this:  (note-feature-used 'foo "Foo").
> The first time you call it, it sends mail to
> emacs-features-used@gnu.org with subject Foo,
> asking you for permission to send it,
> and it records (setq foo t) in your .emacs file.
> If you call it again, it does nothing.
> 
> We could put these calls into various files and functions
> in order to find out (after the next release) whether anyone uses them.

I think such an approach is much too much "in your face" and as a user
I'd run screaming.  OTOH I thought that was already the idea behing
the `obsolete' subdirectory:
The way I see it work, moving a package to `obsolete' is telling
users "we think this is not used any more and we're planning to
get rid of it.  If we're wrong, you'd better tell us soon".  Now
the problem is that people might not notice that a package is obsolete.
My recent patch for `load' to output a warning message when loading
an `obsolete' package is a small step towards making users more
aware of the issue.  We could go a little further, of course.

In any case, based on my analysis I think we should not be afraid
to move stuff into `obsolete', since we can always revert it if people
start complaining.


	Stefan