Re: Dynamic modules: MODULE_HANDLE_SIGNALS etc.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
> From: Daniel Colascione <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 10:24:26 -0800
> 
> > Robustness comes at a price.  You are asking Emacs and its users to
> > pay a heavy price that they don't need to pay, because there are no
> > requirements for Emacs to be as robust as safety-critical software.
> 
> It's not a heavy price at all.

Yes, it is.  You would like us to crash rather than try recovering.
That is a very heavy price in Emacs.

> > Only if you think about Emacs as safety-critical piece of software
> > that must operate continuously, 24x7.  Otherwise, memory leaks when
> > recovering from a disaster that happens very rarely is quite
> > acceptable, if it brings other benefits (such as not losing work).
> 
> My point isn't that memory leaks are disastrous. It's that the
> consequences of this code weren't given due consideration at the time it
> was committed.

You have absolutely no evidence that this wasn't considered.  It's
factually incorrect.  You don't have to know that it's incorrect, but
I would expect you to give more credit to our collective knowledge and
experience than you evidently do.

> > You are not objective, so you exaggerate the risks and dismiss the
> > benefits.
> 
> I disagree that there *are* significant benefits.

Of course, you do.  Like I said: your bias affects your judgment.

> >> *Anything* can happen, and there's no guarantee that what happens is
> >> better for the user than an immediate crash. Hell, you can even cause
> >> security problems with schemes of this sort.
> > 
> > Sorry, that's FUD.
> 
> No it isn't. When you invoke undefined behavior, anything unpleasant can
> happen, and at scale, everything unpleasant will.

It's not undefined behavior, not in practice.  We know quite well what
can and cannot happen.

Anyway, saying that "unpleasant things can happen" _is_ FUD.  I want
to see a single bug report about these unpleasant things happening in
real use, then I'll start thinking whether I should reconsider.