From: Nic <nferrier@tapsellferrier.co.uk>
Subject: a practical reason why emacs shouldn't have dynamic loadables
Date: 04 Aug 2003 10:07:03 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87smohyeo8.fsf@tapsellferrier.co.uk> (raw)
I've been thinking about this. While the licence issue is obviously
important it also seems that dynamic loading could make things more
complicated for the non-technical user.
Ok. Emacs prime audience is very technical people. But it *is* used by
non-technical and by the "less-technical". The latter category
includes junior programmers and people just starting out on the
journey to emacs nirvana.
Whenever dynamic loading gets added to anything complexity is
introduced. It can't be helped, it's part and parcel of increased
flexibility. The most common problem is a missing or out of date
foreign component when the native component is available. For example,
when using java one can have a java library that depends on some
unix shared lib, but have the wrong version of the shared lib: cue
all sorts of problems.
Such things can be resolved, but only by having a robust package
system that can express dependancies properly. And even then things
can get out of sync.
So having this would make life more precarious for non-technical
users. I'm not saying Emacs would break because users are
non-technical, meerly that the risk of emacs breaking (or something
inside emacs that a user relied upon) is increased.
--
Nic Ferrier
http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk
reply other threads:[~2003-08-04 9:07 UTC|newest]
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