Re: Installing cond* in core

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, Stefan.

On Sat, Jan 27, 2024 at 13:36:50 -0800, Stefan Kangas wrote:
> Hi emacs-devel,

> After careful consideration and off-line discussions between Eli and
> myself, we have come up with the following proposed plan:

>  1. We will install cond* in core and let people who prefer it use it,
>     while people who prefer pcase are free to keep using pcase.

>  2. cond* vs pcase is to be considered a matter of stylistic preference.

>  3. There is no intention to forcibly replace pcase with cond* in our
>     code.

Thanks for taking the trouble to work this through.

Can you further confirm that there will be no technical advantages given
to pcase over cond*?  In particular, that condstar.el will be in
lisp/emacs-lisp, and that it will be available from early mid-bootstrap
onwards, just as pcase is?

> Everyone will be free to maintain the code that falls within their area
> of responsibility using the style that they like best.  We hope that
> this will make sense to proponents of both sides of the argument.

> I have myself expressed significant reservations about installing cond*
> in core.  The above could be seen as a politicians response to a
> technical problem, and to some extent it is.

> Our responsibility as maintainers is first and foremost to ensure that
> we can all work together, and unite under a common banner.  Our success
> as a project depends on it.  Thus, the last thing we want to do is to
> alienate any group of contributors, big or small.

On this point, it's worth noting that pcase was silently slipped into
Emacs in the dead of night without any public discussion, and was then
widely proliferated through working code, again without discussion.
That has relevance to "alienation", and goes some way towards explaining
my attitude towards cond* and pcase.

[ .... ]

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).