Re: [PROPOSAL] Builder, a build system integration for Emacs

[Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>]

>> suggest that it should be forward compatible as well?  It isn't, of 
>> course, otherwise the language would be frozen.
>
> We are debating how _stable_ the language is, and backwards 
> compatibility is just one aspect.
>

No, that's not what we are discussing.  Once again, "what is being 
discussed (and was objected to and characterized as a "horror") in this 
subthread is the fact that all versions of a library are available at 
compile time, to ensure that programs that depend on a given version of 
that library can still be built when later, possibly incompatible, 
versions of the library have been released."

You now conveniently try to shift the focus on "the language".

>
> Standard C is remarkably stable; embarassments such as the soon-to-be 
> included ``generic'' string functions aside, what has compiled in the 
> future will likely compile in the fast as well, and vice versa.
>

That's abstract theory (and it ignores the fact that even the "Standard C" 
language evolves: C23 will be released in a few months).  In practice, 
Emacs 27, released less than three years ago, cannot be compiled anymore 
without a patch.

In contrast, a Rust program that compiles, together with its dependencies, 
with a stable release of the Rust compiler, compiles with any later stable 
release of the Rust compiler.

And with this I bow out of this thread.