Re: A proposal for removing obsolete packages

[Andrew Hyatt]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   >   Someone will have to, at the right time, make an
>   > argument that the code should be removed, and be willing to advocate for
>   > it.  This is too high a burden for code that's been in obsolete for years.
>   > I think the burden should be on people to advocate for it's continued
>   > existence.
>
> (You mean "its", not "it's".)
>
> I disagree.  Deleting something that people once used
> should not be semiautomatic.
>
> How about proposing some obsolete features for deletion
> and we can think about deleting them in Emacs 25.

Here are the packages that are eligible for deletion in Emacs 25 (all
obsolete since before Emacs 24):

awk-mode
cl-compat
iso-acc, iso-insert, iso-swed
keyswap
options
resume
scribe
spell
swedish
sym-comp
vc-mcvs

Most of these seem to be unused. I did a Google search for each of them,
but only resume.el and cl-compat had any notable reference. In addition,
vc-mcvs states that it no longer works with vc in Emacs 23, so that
seems like a pretty obvious candidate to go.  And awk-mode is now
implemented by cc-mode, I believe.

I think we should delete all of these in Emacs 25. The one I'm least
sure of deleting is cl-compat, because I don't know enough about the
history of cl compatibility, and how much the current packages replace
this one. But I think we should take a chance - if removing any package
turns out to be a bad idea, we can put it back.

Is there anything here you think would be dangerous to delete?