Principled Handling of Breaking Changes

[Rudi C <rudiwillalwaysloveyou@gmail.com>]

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The recent upgrades to Org mode have been a source of great frustration for
me. Many of the configurations I had previously set up stopped working as
intended, and it took me several days to properly identify the issues,
debug them, and find suitable workarounds. I believe that Org mode would
benefit greatly from adopting a more principled approach to backward
compatibility.

To address this concern, I suggest that all breaking changes in Org mode
follow a versioning scheme similar to Perl's `use v5.34.0;`. This could be
achieved by introducing an `org-defaults-use-version` variable, which would
be set to nil by default, allowing the package to adapt its behavior as
necessary. However, when `org-defaults-use-version` is set to a specific
version, all configuration variables should adhere to the behavior
associated with that particular version. Furthermore, I propose that all
breaking changes be accompanied by a configuration flag, enabling users to
disable the change if they so desire. By implementing these suggestions,
users would be able to upgrade Org mode without the fear of spending hours
dealing with frustration and debugging.

PS: Is there a changelog that ONLY lists breaking changes? There should be
one ...

PPS: Please use Reply to All when responding to this message.

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