Re: Moving packages out of core to ELPA

[JD Smith <jdtsmith@gmail.com>]

> On Feb 18, 2024, at 1:28 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>> From: JD Smith <jdtsmith@gmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2024 16:16:31 -0500
>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> 
>>>> Not necessarily, depending on how one defines obsolete. Just “no longer worth keeping in core”.
>>> 
>>> That's not my interpretation of your description of IDL state.
>> 
>> Then I fear you may have misinterpreted me.  Many astronomers and earth scientists do still use it. A few with emacs.  Maybe it’s a bit like Perl that way.  There’s a lot of legacy code around. So it’s perfectly valuable to keep in ELPA, but IMO the cost/benefit no longer merits inclusion in core.
> 
> Why doesn't the cost/benefit merit inclusion in core?

Maybe I should be more specific here: I don't think the cost/benefit favors having it in the core ready to fire up when any .pro file is loaded (since there are other unrelated flavors with that file type in the wild, e.g. Qt config files, which confuses people), or having the IDLWAVE manual appear at the top level of M-x info (as nice as a manual it is, and as hard as I worked on it lo those many years ago).

> How do you understand the considerations for keeping something in core
> in general?

When the additional burden of extra information presented to users and the costs to maintain, update, seek out and correct outdated code is outweighed by the utility some users gain by having it readily at hand.  A small package that is effectively invisible and never loads unless the user summons it has fewer costs in this way of looking at it.  I do not suggest that judging this balance is trivial or even straightforward, but it's my opinion for this particular package, many of whose users I am well familiar with, the costs outweigh the benefits.  I am interested in how the maintainers proper see the costs of maintenance; maybe I overestimate those.  And I do note there are lots of things under M-x info that probably don't see much use, so I acknowledge these arguments could represent a "slippery slope".