Re: A proposal for removing obsolete packages

[Eli Zaretskii]

> 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 is obsolete!"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 is obsolete and will be removed in Emacs 27".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.