From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: "Write a new package" culture instead of patches? Date: Mon, 18 May 2020 23:51:13 -0400 Message-ID: References: <35DBF02E-44D7-41E5-A217-7D6EC84ED221@icloud.com> <4e937898-ae46-710a-cbca-e452a1156fa1@yandex.ru> <405FCFAB-30E4-4F98-81DA-3B09933E86D0@gnu.org> <207f6196-8df8-0941-b01f-1537c3e080e8@yandex.ru> <2A2E84A7-1737-4BAA-A603-39A328BF44B6@gmail.com> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="39349"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: joostkremers@fastmail.fm, Emacs-devel@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org, stefankangas@gmail.com, pcr910303@icloud.com, dgutov@yandex.ru, eliz@gnu.org, phillip.lord@russet.org.uk, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca To: Yuan Fu Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Tue May 19 05:51:59 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jatIN-000A6x-KK for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 19 May 2020 05:51:59 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60146 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jatIM-0002FK-MX for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Mon, 18 May 2020 23:51:58 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:53528) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jatHf-0001NX-My for Emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 18 May 2020 23:51:15 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:43010) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jatHf-0001Y1-D1; Mon, 18 May 2020 23:51:15 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1jatHd-0006a7-F8; Mon, 18 May 2020 23:51:13 -0400 In-Reply-To: <2A2E84A7-1737-4BAA-A603-39A328BF44B6@gmail.com> (message from Yuan Fu on Sun, 17 May 2020 18:14:36 -0400) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:250852 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > I think it’s just much easier to write helpful.el from scratch > than read all the old code and understand it and try to patch > it. I could have patched package.el to make it fetch from github > repos, but instead I just wrote a quick small package to do that > and moved on, which is much easier than reading and understanding > package.el and convince people that such change is necessary. When such patch packages accumulate, they will get in each others' way because sometimes they will replace the same function with different patched versions. To make the unintegrated patches useful together requires merging them. Thus, the author of each patch package saves work by not following through on the job. Eventually the code in Emacs changes and the patch package doesn't work any more. We would like those people to help us merge their code (when it is useful enough), but We can't tell them what to do. What can we do? What should we do? Here is what I suggest. * We should not distribute or refer people to patch packages. If a repo includes more than a tiny fraction of patch packages, we should consider it low-quality. * If the job of merging is really easy we could do it straightaway. Rewriting the change would avoid any need for an assignment. * When users express interest in a patch package, we should say, "The right thing to do here is merge that change. Would you like to do that work? Then we could install the patch and support it." -- Dr Richard Stallman Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)