Re: Principled Handling of Breaking Changes

[Ihor Radchenko]

Rudi C <rudiwillalwaysloveyou@gmail.com> writes:

> 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.

Apart from the issue with tab-width you reported, what other breaking
changes caused problems for you?

> 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.

This might be a good idea, but not necessary for Org mode in particular.
Rather for Emacs in general. Would you be interested to post this
suggestion on emacs-devel list?

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

The very first section in https://orgmode.org/Changes.html lists
breaking and important changes. Users are free to limit reading the
changelog to this first section. It is not clear for me why we need a
separate page. 

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>