Re: Moving files from lisp/gnus/ to lisp/net/?

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    People seem to fear using some files in gnus/ because they think the
    files might end up loading all of Gnus.  I believe moving some of the
    self contained files in Gnus elsewhere would be good.  This would make
    it clear that they aren't an intrinsic part of Gnus.  Not only would
    it make it clear for elisp programmers, it would make it clear for us
    working on Gnus.  I.e., to make sure we don't use Gnus functions in
    some of the files.  I just modified pop3.el to revert one such
    example.  It would be bad if many standalone files ended up loading
    Gnus out of pure laziness.

I agree completely.

It makes a big difference for Emacs maintenance whether a file is part
of Gnus or not.  If it is part of Gnus, it is maintained by the Gnus
developers, so they might expect to be able to change it without
looking at how the rest of Emacs uses it.

    I propose to move the following files:

    lisp/gnus/:
    binhex.el
    dig.el
    hex-util.el
    rfc2104.el
    pgg-def.el
    pgg.el
    pgg-gpg.el
    pgg-parse.el
    pgg-pgp5.el
    pgg-pgp.el
    pop3.el
    sha1.el
    sieve.el
    sieve-manage.el
    sieve-mode.el
    starttls.el

We need to consider them one by one, so please don't raise
them as a big group.  Please propose one file or a few related
files at a time, and we will think of them.

Right now let's consider only those that there is a specific reason
to move right now.

      * What will these file's status in "upstream" Gnus be?  Gnus tries to be
	compatible with older emacs versions, so it seems like you can't just
	remove them from the Gnus distribution, but for this "separation" to have
	any real effect for Gnus developers, it would seem that they shouldn't be
	kept in their current location.

If the Gnus developers want to keep including some version of these
files, such as for compatibility purposes, they can.  But they should
not install those files into the Emacs repository any more.  And they
should probably arrange that the separately-distributed Gnus won't use
the Gnus versions of those files when running in an Emacs version that
already has the facility built in.