Re: My plans for VC mode

[Eric S. Raymond]

Dmitry Gutov <address@hidden>:
> On 11/22/2014 06:37 PM, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> 
> >vc-state is likely to surivive with unaltered semantics.  So is diff.
> 
> Ok. I'm also using `vc-diff-internal', `vc-buffer-sync' and
> `vc-exec-after', but these seem to be less relevant to the current
> subject.

Agreed.

> The above list includes `state', which you're saying won't be
> changed much. Other than that, do you mean `dir-status' and
> `dir-status-files' will be merged?

That seems extremely likely. Unless I run out of time to work on this
before I get to it.

> If that means that the new function will behave just like
> `dir-status' when passed a nil (or a directory) instead of a list of
> files, then how that's much better than keeping the functions
> separate? The downside is obvious, meanwhile (API breakage).

It's better than keeping the functions separate because the
separation contributes in a significant way to making the
interface a hairball that is difficult to understand and maintain.

I should have been able to write SRC support in 90 minutes.  The fact
that it took the inventor of both SRC and VC mode *two days* told
me the API has gone very badly wrong.

It is obvious why; we have been succumbing to the temptation to just
glue on another knob for far too long.  Ideally, I would like to
*halve* the number of entry points. And ensure that each one has
simple, regular semantics that can be described in one or two
sentences.  Backward compatibility can go straight to the hell where
it belongs.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>