Re: rename and clean unexec.c

["Óscar Fuentes" <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> That reasoning would preclude renaming files, functions, variables and
>> what-not, right?
>
> Not if you read what I wrote in this thread

Sorry, as we are on the 18th deep level of the thread, maybe I'm
missing something. Perhaps your are referring to this:

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:06:27 +0300

> I'm not against renaming in general, if there is a good reason.

I wonder what's a good reason for you.

> (as opposed to only what you want to read to make the point of your
> liking).

Ha!

Emacs would benefit from any effort towards cleaning the code. There is
cruft everywhere, including #if 0 and #if 1, functions several hundred
lines long sprinkled with dozens of preprocessor conditionals, places
with piles of accumulated hacks for adapting the code to new
environments or for fixing bugs (instead of refactorizing the code),
special cases for dead systems, files which are on the tens of thousands
line count containing loosely related stuff, names that badly convey the
purpose of the named object (unexec.c is a mild example, we could add
xdisp.c and lots of functions with _x_ in its name when actually they
apply to other windowing systems) and so on.

The point of my liking is that somebody is trying to do something about
that. If you object to renaming a small platform-specific file, what
would you say if he wants to rename several core functions?

Being allowed to easily do forensics is good. Having a clean, friendly
code base is *much* better. You would say that unexec.c is just a tiny
inconvenience, but Emacs has hundreds of such tiny inconveniences, and
that amounts to a big annoyance. Please remember that Emacs is not in
maintenance mode by a few veteran hackers, it is supposed to be an
evolving project with a need for new programmers.