5 ms·

I'm not opposed to removing stuff which is really, truly, obsolete, but I am concerned about removing useful functionality and never adding it back (c.f. gnome-

by wtbob 11y ago

I'm not opposed to removing stuff which is really, truly, obsolete, but I am concerned about removing useful functionality and never adding it back (c.f. gnome-screensaver, which destroyed the functionality xscreensaver offered and never restored it — it's been over a decade and gnome-screensaver is still not a replacement for xscreensaver!). A good part of my concern hinges on the definition of 'obsolete.' Code for handling multi-byte characters on black-and-white Macintoshes? Probably obsolete. BBDB? Stagnant but not obsolete (it's sad, incidentally, that it is stagnant, but that's a post for another time).

CJefferson 11y ago
The problem is such code can kill a long-running system. Bugs pile up in code no-one understands, or uses anymore. People are afraid to make large-scale refactorisations / modernisations to code bases as they will have to figure out how to upgrade/fix old stale code. In the case of emacs I can imagine this situation is particularly bad -- lots of old code and limited developer time.
- brudgers 11y ago
  Anecdote is not data, but for Emacs has been pretty bug free. My impression is that things that get used tend to be robust and my belief is that bugs in code that isn't used isn't a problem. From the discussion on the proposal, my guess is that the people who tend to use obsolete packages are people who have been using Emacs for a really long time, and my feeling is that such people know what they are getting into. That said, I guess my premise is that Emacs is a bit unlike a lot of software in that new users encounter problems with features and only very experienced users are likely to experience bugs. YMMV.
philsnow 11y ago
I never adopted gnome-screensaver (or any of the other parts of gnome that I could get away with; I tried using xsettings-daemon for a while but switched back to gnome-settings-daemon for some reason that I don't recall) for many reasons, but this was the nail in the coffin: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeScreensaver/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#Why_doesn.27t_the_screensaver_preferences_tool_allow_me_to_change_the_settings_for_the_theme.3F https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeScreensaver/FrequentlyA...

by wtbob 11y ago

CJefferson 11y ago

The problem is such code can kill a long-running system. Bugs pile up in code no-one understands, or uses anymore. People are afraid to make large-scale refactorisations / modernisations to code bases as they will have to figure out how to upgrade/fix old stale code. In the case of emacs I can imagine this situation is particularly bad -- lots of old code and limited developer time.

brudgers 11y ago
Anecdote is not data, but for Emacs has been pretty bug free. My impression is that things that get used tend to be robust and my belief is that bugs in code that isn't used isn't a problem. From the discussion on the proposal, my guess is that the people who tend to use obsolete packages are people who have been using Emacs for a really long time, and my feeling is that such people know what they are getting into. That said, I guess my premise is that Emacs is a bit unlike a lot of software in that new users encounter problems with features and only very experienced users are likely to experience bugs. YMMV.

philsnow 11y ago

I never adopted gnome-screensaver (or any of the other parts of gnome that I could get away with; I tried using xsettings-daemon for a while but switched back to gnome-settings-daemon for some reason that I don't recall) for many reasons, but this was the nail in the coffin: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeScreensaver/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#Why_doesn.27t_the_screensaver_preferences_tool_allow_me_to_change_the_settings_for_the_theme.3F https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeScreensaver/FrequentlyA...