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From: Kevin Ryde <user42@zip.com.au>
To: hanwen@xs4all.nl
Cc: guile-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: deprecated features
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:44:38 +1100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <874pqgt57t.fsf@zip.com.au> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <45B562E4.4000105@xs4all.nl> (Han-Wen Nienhuys's message of "Tue,  23 Jan 2007 02:20:36 +0100")

Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwen@xs4all.nl> writes:
>
> Perhaps, but I'm for cleaner code. Having to keep deprecated stuff
> around (and worse: having to write various deprecation wrappers for
> them) is detrimental to code quality.

I would say the contrary is worse.  Users following the advertised
rules are told (exaggerated for rhetorical effect :-) "sucked in; we
said there was this feature, we encouraged you to use it, now it's
gone".  If guile is the official extension language, used by all gnu
packages (in principle) then it's a serious problem.

I expect the effect in practice is, at each incompatible change, to
throw off people who can't, or are not inclined to, update.  For
example gcc stuck to autoconf 2.13 for a long long time because
subsequent changes were incompatible (even though they were cleaner in
both concept and implementation).

Or you end up with versionitis, like 5 versions of automake all in
debian at the same time, because they each have subtle different
effects (even if sensible packages are ok with any of them).

> If the consensus is that removing deprecated features will not ever be
> done, then there is little point in marking routines as such, and
> writing wrappers to signal their use.

Yes.  "Don't do it" is the motto.  

> We could clean up GUILE by throwing away all the bookkeeping.

It has to stay for applications of course.


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  parent reply	other threads:[~2007-01-24 22:44 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 19+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2007-01-19 15:24 Eval options macro: backward compatibility? Han-Wen Nienhuys
2007-01-20 14:35 ` Ludovic Courtès
2007-01-22 14:18   ` Han-Wen Nienhuys
2007-01-22 20:48     ` Kevin Ryde
2007-01-23  0:51       ` deprecated features Han-Wen Nienhuys
2007-01-23  1:03         ` Kevin Ryde
2007-01-23  1:20           ` Han-Wen Nienhuys
2007-01-23 14:50             ` Bruce Korb
2007-01-23 22:45               ` Han-Wen Nienhuys
2007-01-23 23:20                 ` Bruce Korb
2007-01-24  0:44                   ` Han-Wen Nienhuys
2007-01-24  0:10                     ` Bruce Korb
2007-01-23 23:10               ` Han-Wen Nienhuys
2007-01-23 23:35                 ` Bruce Korb
2007-01-24  0:38                   ` Han-Wen Nienhuys
2007-01-24 22:44             ` Kevin Ryde [this message]
2007-01-22 15:28   ` Eval options macro: backward compatibility? Han-Wen Nienhuys
2007-01-22 20:50   ` Kevin Ryde
2007-01-24 21:05 ` Kevin Ryde

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