Re: Wherein I argue for the inclusion of libnettle in Emacs 24.5

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 11:04:51 -0800 Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote: 

PE> On 02/04/2014 10:32 AM, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
PE> Using the GnuTLS API would remove Stefan's objection to the change,
PE> no? Emacs already depends on the GnuTLS API.
>> 
>> No, sadly, because it's new C glue code and his goal is to remove such.

PE> As I understand it his objection is to adding dependencies on new
PE> libraries, not to more-effectively using libraries that Emacs already
PE> depends on.  For example, he didn't object to adding
PE> internal-default-process-filter or to bool-vector-count-population,
PE> even though these functions both involved new C glue code.

Well, here's the rejection letter:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/163980

As I said then, feel free to add your vote of support.  So far Lars and
I are the only ones asking for encryption that doesn't require calling
out to external binaries like GnuPG.  I followed up to Lars specifically
so I could explain that I thought (after a few months of letting things
rest) that loose coupling of *encryption* features specifically was a
bad idea.  Compared to, say, XML parsing, encryption is much less of a
feature and more of an integral facility.

I respect and understand Stefan's opinion and have not argued about the
FFI in general (in fact I was planning to work on it; it's a neat
feature), but I think Lars makes good points against FFI from practical
experience, and I think my point above is worth considering as well.

Ted