Re: Turning Gnus groups into real objects

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Barry Fishman <barry@ecubist.org> writes:

> This seems like its going to be a full rewrite, where some users are forced to
> have to do a lot of work just to keep their code working.  Would it be a
> bit easier if you just forked the project and used a new package prefix.
> Then the code could get debugged as a separate mail system, and people
> could transition to it at their convenience.
>
> It would certainly make finding one's code that needs to be changed
> easier, and since the data file are kept the same, one can avoid loosing
> any data even if they try both systems (not concurrently) during a
> transition.

Ugh, I'm very wary of ending up in a "you break it, you buy it"
situation. In terms of what we're talking about in this thread, anyway,
backwards compatibility should be maintained, not only for users but
also for hackers. I suppose it's possible that at some point in the
future we could consider taking a deep breath and breaking
compatibility -- and in that case I think you're right that a temporary
fork might be a good idea -- but I'm in no hurry to get there.