Subject: Re: bug#73812: 30.0.91; ERC 5.6.0.30.1: Customizing erc-modules loads ERC when starting Emacs

From: "J.P." <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2024 17:49:43 -0700

Dear auxiliary maintainers,

It seems Eli has tired of my nagging or is otherwise indisposed when it
comes to this issue. To summarize:

- Due to my own stupidity, the version of ERC in Emacs 30 autoloads the
  option `erc-modules', which is the most important of ERC's options and
  among the first that users typically customize.

- Because of this change, the very presence of `erc-modules' in one's
  `custom-file' now loads all of ERC at startup, including any library
  housing a member module, be it built-in or third-party.

- Users who no longer use ERC but still have a customization entry lying
  around will also be affected. Likewise for users who prefer running
  multiple Emacs instances to segregate concerns.

- This issue won't be solvable by installing ERC 5.6.1 from ELPA, where
  the problematic line will have been removed, because the autoload is
  permanently baked into lisp/ldefs-boot.el.

- The problematic change will be new in Emacs 30.1.

"J.P." <[email-masked]> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>>> All in all, I'd prefer to leave this alone in Emacs 30.  We have time
>>> to try reverting this on master and seeing whether it's a net win or a
>>> net loss, given the past history of the issue.  (AFAIU, if you remove
>>> this line, some change is pertinent in the manual?)
>
> It's been reverted on master for ten days now with no complaints:
>
>   https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=1854f275
>
> If that's long enough to qualify as a net win, can we proceed with a
> backport?

It's been two weeks now since I was tasked with reverting this on master
in order to assess the damage, of which none has since been reported.

Apologies if I'm out of line in pressing the issue, but I'm driven by a
need to advocate for ERC's users, who've suffered greatly in the past
due to my cowardliness in similar situations [1]. As such, I would very
much appreciate a final verdict on this matter.

Thanks,
J.P.

[1] https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=62833#14