Re: proposal: require GnuTLS 3.1.x (previous stable)

[Stefan Monnier]

> 1) support for 2.x requires a specific contortion in the code

AFAICT, there's no such contortions yet.  The needed ifdefs are fairly
simple and clean.

> 1) both 2.x and 3.x are installed (yes, it happens)
> 2) the user inadvertently compiles with 2.x
> 3) the user gets bug/security hole surprise

That doesn't sound very likely either, so I'm not worried about that risk.

> I'm sure we can argue about this for a while, but I personally would
> just like to set a cutover date where GnuTLS 2.x is not supported, not
> debate convenience and featuritis. How about Emacs 26?

We usually consider it OK to drop support for things that are "older
than Debian stable" or thereabout.  But usually it depends a lot on the
cost of maintaining this backward compatibility.  In this case, the cost
seems to be very reasonable, so I see no reason to drop support for
GnuTLS2 at this stage.  Those tradeoffs change over time, so by Emacs-26
it's quite likely that we'll get rid of GnuTLS2 support, indeed.


        Stefan