Subject: Re: bug#43300: [PATCH] Make M-x show new commands for obsolete aliases

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2021 11:32:27 -0600

Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:

> Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> I dropped the ball here a little bit, but I note that Stefan Monnier did
>> not like the new behavior, and in hindsight (and with more experience
>> using this feature) I think he is correct.
>
> I think the original idea here was good -- make command deprecation less
> abrupt, and teach users about the new aliases.

I find myself going back and forth: with the new filtering, there is
suddenly a hope that `M-x' can produce a clean list of useful commands.

The feature discussed here makes the list less clean, for reasons that
are only temporarily useful.  This is compounded by the fact that we
maintain backwards compatibility aliases for such a long time.  But of
course there are also benefits to this more gentle obsoletion, as you
say.

Here's an idea:

How about showing only obsolete aliases that are new in this major
version?  That could give us almost all the benefits without any of the
drawbacks.

> Couldn't those cases be fixed?

Yes, it should be trivial.