Re: Lisp files that load cl-lib in problematical ways

[Richard Stallman]

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  >    This complexity and the resulting complications, I believe, are what
  > Richard was trying to avoid when he designed Emacs Lisp to be a simpler
  > dialect of Lisp, and why he sees cl-lib.el as a trojan horse that is
  > changing Emacs Lisp.

I think you've put your finger on it.

I see nothing wrong with having an optional extension which implements
(more or less) Common Lisp in Emacs Lisp.  That's what I thought we
had done.

However, I object to incorporating (more or less) Common Lisp an essential part
of Emacs Lisp.  And it looks like we've been drifting into that.

There is no sharp line between the one and the other, and no simple
test to determine which of those two our current situation actually
is.  Rather, there is a spectrum that runs from "CL support is
available but you can ignore it" to "the CL constructs are an
essential and unavoidable part of Emacs Lisp."

The specific practical questions I've asked are efforts to evaluate
where we are now along that spectrum.  Of course, the answer to that
isn't precise either.  But I was very surprised to learn how far
Emacs has gone towards the latter end.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)