Re: Idea for determining what users use

[storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)]

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

RMS wrote:
> 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.

I don't really like this approach.

Rather, I agree with Stefan:

> 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 the problem is that people might not notice that a package is obsolete.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.  

That's a good feature IMO.

>                      We could go a little further, of course.

.. By telling the user that he may use "report emacs bug" to tell us
why he finds the obsoleted package useful.

In any case, I don't really see why we need to (ever) remove
anything from obsolete/ -- as long as we say that packages that
are in obsolete/ are `no longer actively supported'.

The only reason for actually removing a package from obsolete/
would be if  we change basic things in emacs that causes the
package to break ... then we may choose to remove it if it is
too much work to fix.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk