Re: Finalizing 'inhibit-automatic-native-compilation'

[Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>]

Hello,

On Sat 11 Feb 2023 at 11:16AM +02, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> The bug report you posted, https://bugs.debian.org/1021842, is not a
> crash, it is a failure which happens when a 3rd-party package is used.
> I see no detailed analysis of the error in the bug report, so I can
> only speculate what could be the reasons for the error:
>
>   . buttercup was not updated to work with native-compilation (was
>     this failure reported to the buttercup developers?)
>   . Debian test harness uses buttercup incorrectly when
>     native-compilation is enabled (e.g., it doesn't set up
>     native-comp-eln-load-path to allow the trampolines to be produced)
>   . the test that failed should only be run if Emacs was built without
>     native-compilation

I posted that particular bug because it's one that occurs precisely when
HOME is not writeable, and not otherwise, and the error output says that
the problem is not being able to write to HOME.  But it sounds like you
think someone who enables native comp is also responsible for setting up
trampoline redirection in the event that HOME is not writeable; i.e.,
the idea that Emacs should be able to do everything not explicitly
involving HOME without a writeable HOME doesn't hold once native-comp is
enabled.

>> I understand that you don't want features in upstream Emacs for corner
>> cases.  I share this design goal with you.  I think, though, that there
>> are good reasons to think this is not a corner case, with Lars.
>> The majority of users of Emacs on GNU systems are probably using our
>> packages, and that requires a feature satisfying (i) and (ii).
>
> We will have to agree to disagree on that, and this is final.

Yes, we'll have to agree to disagree.  We'll rename the variable to have
a DEBIAN_ prefix once Emacs 29 is out and our freeze is over, so that
people can assume it's not a feature they will find elsewhere, hopefully
to avoid any spurious bug reports upstream.

Thanks.

-- 
Sean Whitton