Re: Gud lord!

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Sat, 07 Jun 2003 12:12:18 -0400
"Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/address@hidden> wrote:

> I don't have a particular opinion on this except I'd like to remind
> people that CVS deals very poorly with file moves

I know. In fact, when talking about moving files I specifically asked if
there was a way to keep information for moved files, and the answers
said: "No, the best way is cp, cvs rm, cvs add."

> so it's best
> to refrain from doing them unless there's a really compelling reason.

From Richard Stallman, Wed, 14 may 2003:

> Can anyone suggest Lisp files that ought to be moved to a different
> place under the `lisp' directory?

so people shouldn't be surprised if finally some lisp files get moved. I
didn't see a single reply to that thread that said: "No, please, let's
not move anything unless there's a *very strong* reason, because we'll
lose history and it's going to be a PITA."

> I'd be happy to see gud.el reintegrate its lisp/gud.el location for
> this reason.
> 
>       Stefan "who wasn't particularly thrilled by the move of outline.el
>               for example"

I'm thrilled by every move whose result makes the lisp/ structure and
organization better (for, admitedly, highly subjective definitions of
"better"). Tracking changes in CVS files is harder after they move,
true; but I was under the feeling that lisp/ organization was there to
help users, not developers :)

Fact is, all these changes except the last one (gud.el) were suggested
in the above mentioned thread and no opinions were heard
against. There were complains for a few modules (Lucid related, mostly)
and those didn't move.

And every one of these changes was approved by RMS; gud's move to
progmodes was in fact *asked* by him (I hadn't thought of it).

Every single time that big changes (big == "affecting more than one file")
are suggested in the list (be whitespace cleanup, macro changes, code or
modules reorganization, whatever), there's little or no discussion, no
one really opposes... and then, after the fact, disagreement suddenly
pop ups. I find it quite a bit tiring. (I'm not talking just about
things where I was involved; the same happened for Ken Raeburn's
Guile-related reorganization, for example.)

                                                                Juanma