use-package: Should we merge bind-chords.el / use-package-chords.el?

[Stefan Kangas]

I'm not so sure about merging bind-chord.el, use-package-chords.el, and
use-package-chords-tests.el into emacs.git, as part of the use-package
merge.

The most important reason is that they seem to depend on key-chord.el,
which is not in Emacs, nor on (Non-)GNU ELPA.[1]  But I'm also seeing that:

1. Two of the tests are failing.  Unless I'm missing something, they
   haven't been running as part of the use-package GitHub CI.[2]

2. They have seen minimal maintenance over the years, and have a
   relatively low number of downloads on MELPA.[3]

I'm sure they're very useful to some users, but the fact that they won't
work with Emacs OOTB makes it seem like the increased maintenance burden
might not be worth it.  They also risk confusing users that try to use
them, only to find that they don't work.

They currently reside on the features/use-package branch, but that would
be easy to reverse with a simple "git rm" on the branch.  Instead, we
could look into finding a new maintainer for them, in order to give them
an independent existence as GNU ELPA packages.

Footnotes:
[1]  https://github.com/emacsorphanage/key-chord

[2]  https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package/blob/master/Makefile#L103

[3]  See their git history here:
     https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package/commits/master/bind-chord.el
     
https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package/commits/master/use-package-chords.el
     
https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package/commits/master/use-package-chords-tests.el

     I see 13,567 downloads on MELPA, compared to 1,995,169 for
     use-package: https://melpa.org/#/?q=use-package