Subject: Re: bug#50999: 29.0.50; Deleting libraries obsolete since Emacs 24

From: Po Lu <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2021 19:21:35 +0800

Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]> writes:

>     * lisp/obsolete/assoc.el:

There are many instances of `asort', `aelement', `aput' and `adelete'
in the Lisp files commonly shared around my organization, many of which
have to work with Emacs 23 and even Emacs 21 (as some of our Emacs users
will not move to anything newer).

>     * lisp/obsolete/info-edit.el:

I maintain hand-written Info documentation for most software at my
organization, which I edit with the mechanism provided in info-edit.el.

I would really appreciate it not being removed.

>     * lisp/obsolete/pgg-def.el:
>     * lisp/obsolete/pgg-gpg.el:
>     * lisp/obsolete/pgg-parse.el:
>     * lisp/obsolete/pgg-pgp.el:
>     * lisp/obsolete/pgg-pgp5.el:
>     * lisp/obsolete/pgg.el:

PGG is important for working with the various odd implementations of PGP
that can be found on antiquated systems.  I use it regularly at my day
job, and would really appreciate it not being removed.

>     * lisp/obsolete/vip.el:

Where I work, there is someone still using VIP.  She thinks that newer
packages, such as Viper, have deviated too far from the vi behaviour she
remembers to still be useful to her.

Of the rest, I have no specific opinion, but I'd like to ask something:
why remove this code at all?  Obsolete code doesn't have to be
maintained, and if nobody is really interested in it, it will eventually
rot.

People interested in PGG or VIP will naturally come across issues in
that code and fix it.

So instead of removing obsolete code every N releases, how about
removing all references to such code from the documentation, not
byte-compiling it during builds, and not running tests on that code?

A few more files in obsolete/ cannot possibly hurt, especially if nobody
is expected to maintain them.