Re: Do shorthands break basic tooling (tags, grep, etc)? (was Re: Shorthands have landed on master)

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Eli.

On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 21:25:41 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2021 17:25:56 +0000
> > Cc: Phil Sainty <psainty@orcon.net.nz>, joaotavora@gmail.com,
> >   emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>

> > I thought that large features weren't being accepted for Emacs 28 any
> > more?  These "shorthands" are a gigantic feature which disrupt our way
> > of developing Emacs.

> The shorthands don't disrupt anything unless they are used.  And using
> them is completely opt-in, and intended for specific situations where
> it is justified.

I haven't opted in.  How do I opt out of somebody else's use of these?
I.e. so that grep still works for me?

> Of course, any feature can be abused, but the blame is on those who
> abuse it.

And it is you and I who will suffer, through not being able to use grep
reliably on the Emacs sources.

> > Can we please delay the release of Emacs 28.1 until we have these tool
> > enhancements in place?

> I see no reason for such a delay, given that our tools are already
> imperfect.  We should improve our tools, of course, but there's
> nothing in shorthands that justifies delaying Emacs 28.1.

> > And until that point, have a moratorium on using shorthands?

> I'm not aware of any plans to use shorthands in Emacs itself.  People
> talk and discuss these possibilities, and that's okay.  But that's
> just talk at this point, certainly for Emacs 28.

Even if it's just talk, how will we know that it's just talk?  And how
long will it stay just talk?  Clearly there's intent to use this,
otherwise nobody would have bothered implementing it.

> > > > Is whatever we're gaining actually worth the resulting obfuscation?

> > > Time will tell.  It currently sounds like its worth it, but as with
> > > any such feature, we could be wrong.

> > And if we are wrong, what then?

> Then we will avoid using it, or maybe even recommend that no one does.
> And perhaps replace shorthands with something better.  But we aren't
> there anymore, and I think your sense of a catastrophe is unjustified,
> if not exaggerated.

OK, how do you suggest I find all occurrences of jit-lock-functions in
the Emacs Lisp sources after shorthands start being used?  How do I find
occurrences of a symbol in Emacs Lisp sources on the web, which
currently a web search will find?

> > > They are not the real reason, they are just the way to explain the
> > > feature in simple terms.  The real reason is to make namespace
> > > management easier.

> > I don't think, on balance, it will do this.

> Time will tell.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).