Subject: bug#12215: CSET is unnecessarily confusing

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:17:41 -0700

On 08/24/2012 02:12 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> I'm actually quite happy keeping xVAR accessor macros ... and xSET
> setter macros ..., to make it easier to experiment on branches.

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood.  But still, currently the people
who are actually doing those experiments (Dmitry, Tom) don't
need these macros and don't particularly want them.  And
Chong is calling BVAR "horrible".  And I too would rather
avoid these macros absent a proven need for them.  If
there's anything that Dmitry's and Tom's experiences have
shown, it's that speculative changes often don't pan out.

We currently have a patch that will get rid of the setters
and of the xVAR and xSET macros, reverting to the pre-23.3
coding style.  With some more work, I can change this patch
to keep the BVAR and KVAR macros, reverting it to the 24.2
coding style.  With still more work I could introduce xSET
macros (assuming we come up on a style for them), resulting
in a new style.

I'd like to avoid this extra work if possible, so how about
this idea for moving forward?  I'll install the
abovementioned patch.  If anyone actually needs the xVAR
and/or xSET macros, I'll volunteer to do the tedious work to
put them into the trunk.  (This offer is good for one year
or 10,000 edits, whichever comes first. :-)

That way, if we don't need those macros I'll save some work,
and if we do need them I won't cost myself any more work
than I'd do under your proposal.