Deprecating BBDB 2.x support in EUDC for Emacs 26.1

Deprecating BBDB 2.x support in EUDC for Emacs 26.1

[Thomas Fitzsimmons]

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Hi,

For EUDC in the Emacs 26.1 release, I'd like to deprecate backward
compatibility support for BBDB versions less than 3, and then
subsequently remove that support, maybe as soon as Emacs 27.1.  Doing so
would simplify eudcb-bbdb.el and allow it to take advantage of new
features that Roland has been adding in BBDB 3.x, like UUIDs.

We discussed this idea on the bbdb-user mailing list.  So far, no one
has objected, but I thought I would also ask here before pushing the
NEWS patch.  Does the attached NEWS patch look OK to push to the
emacs-26 branch?

Thanks,
Thomas


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commit 03bbda0e230776d4799e57b9d74dade8b7ef636b
Author: Thomas Fitzsimmons <fitzsim@fitzsim.org>
Date:   Fri Oct 27 22:58:11 2017 -0400

    * etc/NEWS (EUDC): Deprecate BBDB 2.x backward compatibility.

diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index b40d578..7c0d5fa 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -835,6 +835,13 @@ code.
 'eshell-input-filter-initial-space' to ignore adding commands prefixed
 with blank space to eshell history.
 
+** EUDC
+
+*** Backward compatibility support for BBDB versions less than 3
+(i.e., BBDB 2.x) is deprecated and will likely be removed in the next
+major release of Emacs.  Users of BBDB 2.x should plan to upgrade to
+BBDB 3.x.
+
 ** eww
 
 +++

Re: Deprecating BBDB 2.x support in EUDC for Emacs 26.1

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Thomas Fitzsimmons <fitzsim@fitzsim.org>
> Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 21:07:25 -0400
> 
> For EUDC in the Emacs 26.1 release, I'd like to deprecate backward
> compatibility support for BBDB versions less than 3, and then
> subsequently remove that support, maybe as soon as Emacs 27.1.  Doing so
> would simplify eudcb-bbdb.el and allow it to take advantage of new
> features that Roland has been adding in BBDB 3.x, like UUIDs.
> 
> We discussed this idea on the bbdb-user mailing list.  So far, no one
> has objected, but I thought I would also ask here before pushing the
> NEWS patch.  Does the attached NEWS patch look OK to push to the
> emacs-26 branch?

Looks OK, thanks.  Is it possible to mark some 2.x specific functions
or variables obsolete?

Re: Deprecating BBDB 2.x support in EUDC for Emacs 26.1

[Thomas Fitzsimmons]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Thomas Fitzsimmons <fitzsim@fitzsim.org>
>> Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 21:07:25 -0400
>> 
>> For EUDC in the Emacs 26.1 release, I'd like to deprecate backward
>> compatibility support for BBDB versions less than 3, and then
>> subsequently remove that support, maybe as soon as Emacs 27.1.  Doing so
>> would simplify eudcb-bbdb.el and allow it to take advantage of new
>> features that Roland has been adding in BBDB 3.x, like UUIDs.
>> 
>> We discussed this idea on the bbdb-user mailing list.  So far, no one
>> has objected, but I thought I would also ask here before pushing the
>> NEWS patch.  Does the attached NEWS patch look OK to push to the
>> emacs-26 branch?
>
> Looks OK, thanks.

Thanks for reviewing.  Pushed.

> Is it possible to mark some 2.x specific functions or variables
> obsolete?

The compatibility logic is in EUDC functions that will continue to
exist.  The only candidate is eudc--using-bbdb-3-or-newer-p, but that's
an EUDC-private function so it's not that useful to mark as obsolete.

There are some declare-function calls, to declare BBDB 2.x functions
that are not currently part of Emacs.  But they are used in code that
hasn't been ported to BBDB 3.x yet.

My plan there is to a) move core parts of BBDB 3.x into Emacs core to
satisfy those requirements, and b) port the EUDC code to those new BBDB
3.x functions.  Doing so will eliminate the need to declare functions
that don't exist in Emacs.  Those declarations were a necessary ugliness
before BBDB's copyright issues were worked out.

Thanks,
Thomas

Re: Deprecating BBDB 2.x support [in EUDC] for Emacs 26.1

[Roland Winkler]

On Sat, Oct 28 2017, Thomas Fitzsimmons wrote:
> For EUDC in the Emacs 26.1 release, I'd like to deprecate backward
> compatibility support for BBDB versions less than 3, and then
> subsequently remove that support, maybe as soon as Emacs 27.1.  Doing so
> would simplify eudcb-bbdb.el and allow it to take advantage of new
> features that Roland has been adding in BBDB 3.x, like UUIDs.

I am cross-posting this to the org-mode mailing list.  If there is more
to be said about the following from the perspective of org-mode, let's
continue the discussion on that list only.

I believe org mode interacts with BBDB, too.  Yet I know little to
nothing about the details.  From the org-mode perspective, is there a
similar issue with BBDB 2 vs. BBDB 3, as mentioned by Thomas about EUDC?

The long-term goal is to make at least the core of BBDB 3 part of GNU
Emacs to provide a more coherent framework for other packages like EUDC
and Org mode, see

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-11/msg01888.html

Are there any thoughts about this from the org community?

Here I am thinking also about the code in BBDB: my re-write of BBDB
mostly focused on BBDB "by itself" and its interface with MUAs like
Gnus, Rmail, etc.  Is there anything you would like to see to facilitate
the interaction of BBDB with other packages like Org mode (or EUDC)?

Roland