Re: A proposal for removing obsolete packages

[Andrew Hyatt]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: Andrew Hyatt <address@hidden>
>> Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 22:09:27 -0500
>> 
>> Currently, obsolete elisp is moved to the obsolete subdir. Attempts to
>> load them are successful, but come with the warning message "<package>
>> is obsolete!" I propose that we leave them in the obsolete subdir for
>> one major version. At the start of every new major version, we remove
>> everything from that subdir package that has been there since the start
>> of last major version.
>> 
>> For example, a package that is declared obsolete during the development
>> of Emacs 25 would be moved to obsolete, and a message would be added to
>> say that "<package> is obsolete and will be removed in Emacs 27". It
>> couldn't be removed in Emacs 26 because it didn't start Emacs 25 in
>> obsolete.
>> 
>> In short, obsolete package added in the middle of a release will be
>> guaranteed to exist until the next major release, and then one more
>> major release.
>
> That sounds good to me, thanks.
>
>> There might be even better solutions to this problem. I certainly have
>> not attempted to explore the entire space of solutions. Perhaps the
>> timing is too long as well - I wouldn't mind making things more
>> aggressive and instead removing all obsolete packages at the start of
>> each major version (meaning that an obsolete package would last one
>> major version or less). This probably would work itself out and obsolete
>> packages would tend to not be removed at the end of the major version
>> development cycle.
>
> We've repeatedly seen reports from people who jump 2 major releases,
> so I think removing sooner than after a full major release cycle is
> not something we should start with.

Sounds reasonable to me, thanks for the feedback.