Re: sqlite3

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Cc: eric@ericabrahamsen.net,  eliz@gnu.org,  cesar.mena@gmail.com,
>   pipcet@gmail.com,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2021 06:55:41 +0100
> 
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > The reason I expected this to be used for configuration specifications
> > is that that seems like a natural thing to do.  Assuming we get this
> > facility into a good shape, why NOT use it for storing configuration
> > specs?
> 
> I think defcustom is fine for configuration data.  Configuration data
> doesn't change a lot, and people like to put it into Git, etc.

I think basically wherever saving configuration in text form makes
sense, i.e. it is short enough and readable enough by humans, it
should be preferred, because that allows viewing it, modifying it, and
generally managing it by more general-purpose tools.

> Application session state is a different beast, and is something that
> Emacs has lacked a convenient interface for, so each package has come up
> with its own way to store state, or more commonly -- not bothered,
> because it's so much (boring) work.

Application state is indeed a different issue, that should be decided
separately on a case by case basis.  For example, should
.emacs.desktop remain in its current text form?  I personally think it
should, because it's still readable enough and performant enough, but
there could be other opinions.

Large databases are yet another different beast.  For example,
consider the mairix-related features in Emacs: we current use an
external program for that, where using a database internally from
Emacs could make at least some sense: for starters, we wouldn't be
limited by search capabilities of mairix the program, but could
instead unleash the full power of Emacs searching capabilities.