Re: Adding use-package to core

[Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>]

xenodasein@tutanota.de writes:

> Something changes or it doesn't, I have no clue what you mean.

Most changes break nothing.

> Anyway, 'statistics' in my head formed after looking through lisp files,
> how many of them there, and the fact that how few people are maintaining
> these, anyone can see this thanks to git.

I don't see that.  What I see instead is the same as with any other
mature, well-established software: most of our code is finished and does
not require constant changes.

> Problem is over time commits to core packages keep making assumptions
> about each other's existence and that inter-dependency does not seem
> to encourage anyone to work on them, even their original writers.

Any specific examples?

Anyway, once a package is included with Emacs, and its minimum Emacs
requirement also bumped, it is fine for it to rely on the rest of Emacs
being present.  But if its maintainer decides to support older versions
of Emacs as well, then everyone else does not interfere.  See TRAMP for
an example of one such package.

> Even you are in your own X corner and not touching that issue, except
> for nay-saying on this list.

It might not seem like it, but I have a job to keep me busy, and the
amount of time I can spend on Emacs is quite limited.

Add to that the fact that Emacs 29 is about to be released, and the
major changes to the GUI code in it have inevitably led to regressions
that have to be ironed out, and you will see why most of my changes in
the past two months have been limited to minor refactorings and bug
fixes.  That approach seems to have paid off.  For example, it has led
to bugs that have lain unfound for almost 30 years being fixed (see for
example 25c6bc7a3.)

> Yeah? Who he is going to put in the cold hard work hours into
> maintaining all that?

Presumably whoever wrote the package and has *asked* us to include it
into Emacs.

> Furthermore after certain complexity it is of no help even having
> numerous developers.

[...]

> These are well documented and understood facts of software development
> and when someone keeps denying these things without substantial
> argument it displays blatant incompetence.

So by changing the repository in which some code is placed, other code
is made more complex?  By what, magic?

> I don't see how bundling millions of lines of code together when there
> is already a system to distribute these as external packages is a
> shortcut to usefulness for everyone (what does that even mean?)

You cannot seriously claim it is easier to run several commands to
unpack and install a package in the ELPA directory than to do nothing at
all.