Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] gnu: emacs-org: Update to 9.7.4.

From: Suhail Singh <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2024 01:27:01 -0400

Adam Porter <[email-masked]> writes:

> Suhail, I appreciate your making the package build on Guix,

Hello, Adam.  Though I am not a user, I appreciate you authoring the
package and releasing and supporting it for the benefit of others.

> but have these failing tests been reported as bugs upstream?

I have not made any bug reports regarding the failing tests yet.  I
don't know if others have (or rather didn't, before I started writing
this email).  I did try and see if a newer commit from org-super-agenda
was immune from the test failures, but didn't have any luck.

It's not clear to me whether the test failures point to bug(s) in
org-super-agenda, bug(s) in its test suite, bug(s) in Org mode, or (less
likely, but still possible) false positive(s) arising due to the tests
not being designed necessarily to run on Guix.  I was planning to look
into it further, but since I don't personally use org-super-agenda it's
not been a priority.  Regardless, for the benefit of others, I am glad
that you pay attention to this mailing list and are now aware.

> You mention in a code comment an obsolete variable, but I don't know
> anything about that, and I can't find a bug reported on the tracker
> about it.

The "obsolete" variable in question is
`org-super-agenda-retain-sorting'.  The tests making use of the older
user option are `org-super-agenda-test--with-retained-sorting' and
`org-super-agenda-test--without-retained-sorting'.  In commit
`27aa0db4243b835494f4836b82d0fbf3c5be7392' on 2021-09-28, it seems you
renamed that option to `org-super-agenda-keep-order'.  The tests were
not updated.  The FIXME comment in the former test notes:

#+begin_src emacs-lisp
  ;; FIXME: This seems to be slightly broken on Org 9.6.6.  Maybe <https://github.com/alphapapa/org-super-agenda/issues/207>?
#+end_src

The bug #207 seems to have been first noted about 3 years ago, is
currently open and assigned to you, and targeted for the 1.4 milestone.

> Please, if you know about a bug,

Not being a user of the package, my awareness is limited to the presence
of test failures.  I am not sure if you have CI configured for the
project, but if you have and aren't seeing these failures, it may be
worth your while to understand where those differences stem from.  If
you do and do see the same failures, your awareness and understanding of
the issues probably exceeds my own limited understanding, so please
excuse most of this email.  If you don't have CI configured, you may
want to consider doing so.

Whether these failures are false positives or not, is not clear to me.
If I had spent more time analyzing it, I am sure eventually I would have
understood it and either added to the existing issues, or opened new
ones, or submitted one or more patch/pull request upstream.  Alas,
there's only so much time in the day and we must all prioritize.

> and especially if you know about a solution,

As noted in my patch, my attempt to naively rename
`org-super-agenda-retain-sorting' to `org-super-agenda-keep-order' did
not fix the failures I observed.  The actual fix, whatever it is, isn't
one I'm aware of.

> report it upstream so it can be fixed.

That _is_ the general protcol ;)

> I maintain a number of Emacs/Org packages, and keeping up with the
> changes in Org, and trying to maintain compatibility across versions
> which have incompatibilities, is trying, especially if users don't
> report them (I don't always run the latest release of Org).

I agree user reports are invaluable.  In fact, I'd go further and say
that user time is invaluable.  However, given that their time is
precious, it seems wasteful to rely on them for something that can be
adequately addressed by a properly configured CI system (at least in
this instance).  In my candid opinion, their time is better served
reporting on usability concerns that aren't (yet) covered by tests.

Regards,
-- 
Suhail