Re: Experimental features

[Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnuvola.org>]

() Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
() Sat, 23 Jun 2007 00:15:06 -0400

   > I like the idea.  Maybe the package manager discussed before
   > could come in to help here too?

   Oh, no, please!  Let's not drag this into it, OK?

it can't be helped.  "experimental" is metadata (label, i.e., boolean
property).  package management is proper metadata management, among
other (logistically-oriented) concerns.

another thing about metadata: if useful, it can be applied to more
things than the original domain.  i.e., if code to be distributed w/
emacs can be labeled "experimental", why not other code outside of
emacs?  how does emacs' semantics for "experimental" interoperate w/
external semantics?  etc.

to be (more) concrete: at the moment, there is only convention:
Commentary comment and w/in it Author, Maintainer, Version "tags".  your
proposal is not simply to suggest adding "Experimental: t" (or perhaps
equivalently "Keywords: ... experimental ...").  it is to codify the
handling of this information w/ user-visible consequences.  when it is
to be treated like so, it is no longer merely conventional.

thus, proper metadata management is again indicated.

thi