Re: Experimental features

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    I know, but I think for example that the vc-bzr.el and vc-hg.el (and
    potentially others, I hope we'll get vc-darcs.el soon) are somewhat
    dangerous to add to Emacs-22.[23...] unless we disable them by default:
    they're not 100% modular since they normally get involved every time we open
    a file (in 99% of the cases they'll just bail saying that they're not
    interested in this file, but still).

    So just like we have obsolete features, we could have experimental features,
    which are completely deactivated by default but can easily be activated by
    the user.  This might allow us to safely include a few more new features in
    minor releases.

I see the point; maybe so.

    I'll send a patch soon, to give a more concrete idea of my I'm thinking of.
    Basically, I currently picture it as adding something like a function
    (activate-experimental-feature <feature>).

What is the benefit of this, over having a simple variable to control it?