Re: Change in files.el

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2017 12:42:22 -0500
> 
> > The issue is not serious enough to prevent people from using the
> > methods you'd like to see, but I question the wisdom of having a
> > project-wide guidelines to _always_ use them is similar situations.
> 
> I think the benefits are the following:
> - (eventually) more consistency, such as knowing that you can use
>   `add-function` will work right on any *-predicate or
>   *-function variable.
> - until recently, it was common for such variables to have a nil
>   default value.  Without an active effort to reverse this, we'll always
>   end up with such new variables introduced with a nil default value
>   (especially since it's very common for new such variables to have
>   a trivial default behavior, and only accumulating complexity later
>   on, at which point it's a lot more difficult to change the default to
>   be non-nil).

I'm saying that the benefits do not necessarily outweigh the
downsides, at least IME.  And since the goal of having this
consistently everywhere is not really achievable in practice, given
our development and maintenance procedures, we are buying
disadvantages on account of an advantage that will never materialize.