Re: trunk r115926: In preparation for the move to git, sanitize out some Bazaar-specific names.

[Juanma Barranquero <lekktu@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 1:37 PM, Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:

> I must be missing something.  I don't see how this would solve any problem
> at all.

It's no different of any other change that obsoletes a variable. Old
code uses it, even if there's newer code with improved features.

> I don't understand why simply looking at emacs-bzr-version isn't working
> for you, given that it's now aliased.

It is working (at least, the part that does not call
emacs-bzr-get-version, which does not exist anymore). I'm saying that
my previous suggestion of defining an obsolete alias is wrong, because
the old and the new variables are NOT compatible.

> What would (emacs-bug) look at under this plan?  If your answer is
> emacs-bzr-version, I strongly object.

Currently? emacs-bzr-version. After the switch? Whatever you want.

>  The fact that the VCS name
> was exposed at that level was a *bug*, a layering violation (and I would
> say the same thing if the name had been emacs-git-version). Nothing
> in Lisp outside version.el has need to know that and therefore
> should not know it.

That it is a layering violation is a matter of opinion. That is was
documented as having a specific structure is a fact, and that at least
one person in the universe (though perhaps more, as it has been
available since 24.3, almost a year ago) is using it, is another fact.
These aren't up for discussion. I understand that you feel strongly
about how that API should be, and I'm not opposing your changes in the
future. But I don't accept that you have the right to rewrite the past
and just *remove* a published API because you think it is wrong
(*even* if you're right) when we have a perfectly clear mechanism to
deal with such situations, named obsolescence.

> I don't see any win at all in this reversion. And because doing it would
> reintroduce a layering violation, I'm going to need a lot of convincing.

Why should I have to convince you that you shouldn't remove published
APIs? I don't want to turn this into a silly commit battle, but if you
don't fix it in a compatible way, I will. I'm only asking that your
changes for the future (need I to remind you that we're still using
Bazaar?) do not break anything that does not *need* to be broken.

     J