RE: A proposal for removing obsolete packages

[Drew Adams]

> > (Isearch could perhaps be modified to automatically open
> > `customize-apropos*' entries that have search hits, instead of
> > ignoring text in closed entries.  But that's not the case today.)
...

> > An improvement to `list-options' could be to have it list only
> > matches for some apropos input.  But even now by listing all
> > options it can be useful.
> >
> > If the `customize-apropos*' commands were improved to show
> > what `list-options' shows (searchable full doc strings and
> > current values) then `customize-apropos-options' might provide
> > a replacement for `list-options'.  But that's not yet the case.
> 
> Everything you wrote above is pretty reasonable, and as far as I can
> tell, correct.  Thanks for the explanation.
> 
> But this last paragraph seems wrong - if I run, for example,
> (customize-apropos-options "beyond.*fill"), I see customize option for
> 2c-beyond-fill-column, complete with the value I've set and the
> docstring, all easily searchable.

With `emacs -q' in Emacs 24.5 or the latest Emacs 25 binary I have
(which is quite old now) I get:
(error "No customizable options matching beyond.*fill")

But yes, if there is only one option that matches the pattern then
the doc string is opened (shown completely).  If there is more
than one (a more typical case for use of an apropos command) then
the details are closed, showing only the first line of the doc
string and not showing the value.

> However, the functionality that appears missing to me is either to be
> able to additionally search by docstring, or showing all options
> (basically, (customize-apropos-options ".*") should work quickly and
> give something useful, neither of which is true for me today.

Yes.  Either it should be improved as suggested or `list-options'
should be retained (IMO).  (And `list-options' could itself be
improved as I indicated, so that it does apropos matching.)