Re: Is there a need for a module system

[Gerd Möllmann]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Does someone really use 5299 packages (or any number close to that) in
> the same Lisp program?
>
> IOW, why should I care how many unused packages lie around on my disk?
> As long as I don't have them in my program, they will never cause any
> trouble.

As a user you don't care.

A program/programming environment allowing the use of 5000 packages
should care, IMO.  As good as it goes.

>> I'd rather ask is that a good enough solution?  Can we do better?  Is it
>> worth the effort?  Can it be done in the first place?  Does it perhaps
>> enable additional things?
>
> All good questions, but they must be considered in some relevant
> context, IMO.  "Good enough solution" for what problems and what
> purposes?
>
> Emacs is enormously large.  Already there's not a single person who
> can be familiar with everything we have, even in the core packages,
> like subr.el, simple.el, etc.  Or even come close to that.  Myself and
> Lars are learning something new almost every day.  We definitely miss
> some problems that get introduced and we are definitely doing an
> imperfect job of keeping Emacs clean, due to this enormity alone.

You're doing a good job, no complaints from me.  We're all mere humans.

> Making Emacs even larger and more complex in these conditions needs
> very good reasons in my book.  So the question of need are very
> pertinent, IMO.

A modules solution doesn't have to be gigantic.  If you take
features/pkg as an example, you'll see that it's small compared to other
stuff.  Ok, it's not complete and whatnot, and maybe never will because
it's an experiment after all, but there is nothing missing that will
require another umpteen lines of code.  And I find it not that
complicated either, at least I tried to make it so.