Re: obby

[Karl Fogel]

Phil Hagelberg <address@hidden> writes:
> With non-dynamic linking it's still possible, but such a project would
> be forced to move more slowly since recompiling would be necessary for
> every user. If I were able to write something that could use libobby and
> distribute it to others without making them patch and recompile Emacs, I
> would be much more likely to start such a project. Every so often I read
> about extensions to Emacs that require a recompile, but I've never
> actually used one since it's more complicated to get started with them;
> I just don't bother.
>
> If the project were worked on by core Emacs developers in the official
> repository, this would be less of an issue since people are more
> familiar with just pulling updates and using that. But it seems
> inconsiderate to the community to say something is not important just
> because it doesn't bother the core developers.

You'll still get *some* users, though -- compiling Emacs is only maybe
one notch harder than a standard build procedure.  Whether the project
is worked on by core devs or not shouldn't matter, because it doesn't
affect the need for recompilation during development.  After all, people
can just pull updates from *your* repository too, into their core Emacs
tree, then apply and rebuild there.

Given the choice between reimplementing it from scratch and just using
the existing library statically (at the expense of installation ease),
I'd say use the library, assuming it's license-compatible with Emacs.
The installation ease problem will go away entirely later if this is
shipped with core Emacs, after all.  A from-scratch implementation would
always lag, and that would probably be even more of a disincentive to
beta users than installation difficulty would be!

-Karl