Re: sqlite3

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Qiantan Hong <qhong@mit.edu>
> CC: Tomas Hlavaty <tom@logand.com>, "larsi@gnus.org" <larsi@gnus.org>,
>         "emacs-devel@gnu.org" <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2021 20:38:15 +0000
> 
> > The use case of accessing existing SQL databases was also discussed.
> > And there's no reason to believe no one will ever want to build a DB
> > application in Emacs Lisp, and no reason to leave that arena only to
> > Python, JS, and other environments that already have SQLite bindings.
> > 
> > So yes, potential use cases do exist where sqlite3 will be a bonus,
> > even before we consider Emacs-specific features that perhaps could
> > benefit from that.  I would even say that SQLite support is more
> > important than xwidgets, for example.
> From what I understand, Tomas’ argument was that for the above use case,
> linking SQLite3 as a dynamic library to the Emacs core is not strictly better.
> A subprocess approach also works very well, as in several existing packages.

We will have to agree to disagree about this, and if Thomas indeed
meant that, I disagree with him as well.

> The above is just to point out some gaps in the reasoning.

There are no gaps in reasoning, just different judgment of proper
solutions to certain engineering problems.  What is the best solution
is in many cases a judgment call, not a self-evident conclusion based
on reasoning.

> Is there a good way that makes some core component (optionally) depends
> on non-core package?

We can arrange for an option that could be used if people install some
3rd-party package, yes.