Re: master 37889523278: Add new `swap` macro and use it

[Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>]

>> Of course, why would you do so, with a guiding principle that everyone 
>> is wrong?
>
> This is again a kind of remark that I respectfully request you to avoid. 
> It adds nothing to your arguments, it just makes it harder for your 
> opponents to stay technical in their responses.
>

The problem is the word "stay".  The objections raised in this thread 
have, from the onset, never been technical, although they may have looked 
like technical ones.  The first technical question you asked was "Did 
Stefan's change break some build?  If so, which build became broken and 
why?", to which you got the following reply:

All builds using C compilers that don't support typeof, which is an 
extension provided by GCC.  In my case, the compiler was Sun C 5.12, where 
__typeof__ is available but typeof is not (by default).

That very much looks like a technical objection.  But it's in fact a 
fabricated one.  Because one of the things "configure" already does (since 
2019!) is to check which syntax of typeof should be used.  If "typeof" is 
not supported and "__typeof__" is, a "#define typeof __typeof__" line is 
added in config.h, and "typeof" is replaced transparently by "__typeof__" 
everywhere, by cpp.  Which means that someone building Emacs with a 
compiler in which __typeof__ is available but typeof is not will not see 
anything when typeof is used: no breakage, no error, no warning, nothing.

The other technical objections were of the same level, and were debunked 
one after the other.  You, Stefan and me wasted several hours doing that 
in this absurdly long thread.  As you may know, Alberto Brandolini said 
something interesting about this.

Under such circumstances, a technical and constructive discussion is 
simply impossible.

What remains now is something that looks like a threat: "if __typeof__ is 
to be used unconditionally, I will simply leave".  I don't see the point 
of such a remark, as anyone is free to come and leave at any time, and for 
any reason.  But it does speak about a certain attitude.

With all due respect, IMO, it's that attitude that should be reprimanded, 
not the possibly imperfect words I used to speak out against it.