Re: Getting rid of prog-indentation-context

[Ingo Lohmar <i.lohmar@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Dec 11 2017 20:02 (+0200), Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Actually, I rather think it's important that we stick to our own
> decisions, especially ones made not so long ago.
>
> This particular decision wasn't made out of ignorance, or slipped
> through the cracks.  It was discussed at length, reviewed, and updated
> according to discussions.  It in effect set a standard for doing this
> stuff, so we should expect others to follow the standard.  We could
> also extend and improve the standard, as we gain experience.  But we
> shouldn't throw it away, just because it is marginally more complex in
> some cases than some simplistic alternative.  Throwing it away without
> a very good reason sends a message to the community that we don't
> uphold our own development decisions, and are quite ready and capable
> of overturning them at will soon after they were made in good faith.
> That's a bad message for a veteran project with a vibrant,
> decentralized community.

Without getting into the technical stuff: I have made (albeit small)
contributions to several Emacs- and non-Emacs-related free software
projects, and I strongly disagree with your description of what kind of
message would be sent.

[Note: I am honestly convinced that everybody participating in the
discussion has Emacs' best interests close to his/her heart.]

1) If the discussed, agreed-upon, reviewed and committed changes would
already have been released, and now reverted, that would send a very bad
message, namely pretty much what you describe above.

But these are *unreleased* changes, ie, we're still in the same
development cycle.

2) If the [...] changes from earlier in the cycle would be reverted w/o
wide consensus (on the *technical* desirability to revert them) of those
who actually discussed, coded, reviewed and committed them, that would
/also/ send a very bad message to contributors, namely that their hard
work might easily be discarded later, on a whim.

But (AFAIU) those who actually worked on that stuff have changed their
mind (again, for technical reasons) and now *want* to revert the
changes.

3) In such a situation, reverting the changes sends a *positive* message
to me: That people working on Emacs are capable and willing to
re-evaluate situations, to change their opinions, to learn and to find
better solutions.

OTOH, keeping the changes under the above circumstances, for formal
reasons, would suggest to me that Emacs development is like some big
blob that keeps moving mostly because of its huge inertial mass.

To my mind, that's the opposite of the message that the Emacs community
wants to send out.

Not even $0.02...