Re: [PATCH v3] git{,-blame}.el: remove old bitrotting Emacs code

[Jonathan Nieder]

Hi,

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote[1]:

> The git-blame.el mode has been superseded by Emacs's own
> vc-annotate (invoked by C-x v g). Users of the git.el mode are now
> much better off using either Magit or the Git backend for Emacs's own
> VC mode.
>
> These modes were added over 10 years ago when Emacs's own Git support
> was much less mature, and there weren't other mature modes in the wild
> or shipped with Emacs itself.
>
> These days these modes have few if any users, and users of git aren't
> well served by us shipping these (some OS's install them alongside git
> by default, which is confusing and leads users astray).
>
> So let's remove these per Alexandre Julliard's message to the
> ML[1]. If someone still wants these for some reason they're better
> served by hosting these elsewhere (e.g. on ELPA), instead of us
> distributing them with git.

The trouble with removing these so abruptly is that it makes for a bad
user experience.

  Warning (initialization): An error occurred while loading ‘/home/jrn/.emacs’:

  File error: Cannot open load file, No such file or directory, git

In some sense that is the distributor's fault: just because Git
upstream stops removing the git.el file doesn't mean that the
distributor needs to.  But the same thing would happen if the user
symlinked git.el into a place that emacs could find when using
upstream Git directly.  And we are putting the distributor in a bad
place.

Ami Fischman (cc-ed) writes:

| IMO a placeholder git.el that did something like:
|
|   (error "git.el is no more; replace (require 'git) with (require 'magit) or
|   simply delete the former in your initialization file(s)")
|
| ideally with a pointer to a short URL explaining the rationale would have
| been fine.
| (note that though I've seen
| https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=893734 I'm _still_ unclear
| as to why the change was made; you might want to clarify in that bug and
| point to it from this, or something else)

What do you think?  Would adding such a placeholder during a
transitional period work well for you?

Thanks,
Jonathan

[1] https://public-inbox.org/git/20180310184545.16950-1-ava...@gmail.com/

[PATCH v3] git{,-blame}.el: remove old bitrotting Emacs code

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

The git-blame.el mode has been superseded by Emacs's own
vc-annotate (invoked by C-x v g). Users of the git.el mode are now
much better off using either Magit or the Git backend for Emacs's own
VC mode.

These modes were added over 10 years ago when Emacs's own Git support
was much less mature, and there weren't other mature modes in the wild
or shipped with Emacs itself.

These days these modes have few if any users, and users of git aren't
well served by us shipping these (some OS's install them alongside git
by default, which is confusing and leads users astray).

So let's remove these per Alexandre Julliard's message to the
ML[1]. If someone still wants these for some reason they're better
served by hosting these elsewhere (e.g. on ELPA), instead of us
distributing them with git.

1. "Re: [PATCH] git.el: handle default excludesfile
   properly" (87muzlwhb0@winehq.org) --
   https://public-inbox.org/git/87muzlwhb0@winehq.org/

Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 
---

On Sat, Mar 10 2018, Martin Ågren jotted:
> [...]

Thanks. Here's a v3 which incorporates these suggestions, and also
Kyle's suggestion upthread which I somehow missed when re-rolling
this. tbdiff to v2 below:

  1: ad00297143 ! 1: 5bc3d3848d git{,-blame}.el: remove old bitrotting Emacs 
code
  @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
   was much less mature, and there weren't other mature modes in the 
wild
   or shipped with Emacs itself.
   
  -These days these modes have very few if users, and users of git 
aren't
  +These days these modes have few if any users, and users of git aren't
   well served by us shipping these (some OS's install them alongside 
git
   by default, which is confusing and leads users astray).
   
  @@ -70,10 +70,10 @@
   -To make the modules available to Emacs, you should add this directory
   -to your load-path, and then require the modules you want. This can be
   -done by adding to your .emacs something like this:
  -+These were added shortly after Git was first released, since then
  ++These were added shortly after Git was first released. Since then
   +Emacs's own support for Git got better than what was offered by these
  -+modules, or was superseded by popular 3rd-party Git modes such as
  -+Magit.
  ++modes. There are also popular 3rd-party Git modes such as Magit which
  ++offer replacements for these.

   -  (add-to-list 'load-path ".../git/contrib/emacs")
   -  (require 'git)
  @@ -92,7 +92,7 @@
   -  the pcl-cvs mode. It can be started with `M-x git-status'.
   +  Wrapper for "git status" that provided access to other git commands.
   +
  -+  Modern alternatives to this are Magit, or the VC mode that ships
  ++  Modern alternatives to this include Magit, and VC mode that ships
   +  with Emacs.

* git-blame.el:

 contrib/emacs/.gitignore   |1 -
 contrib/emacs/Makefile |   21 -
 contrib/emacs/README   |   32 +-
 contrib/emacs/git-blame.el |  483 -
 contrib/emacs/git.el   | 1704 
 5 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 2228 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 contrib/emacs/.gitignore
 delete mode 100644 contrib/emacs/Makefile
 delete mode 100644 contrib/emacs/git-blame.el
 delete mode 100644 contrib/emacs/git.el

diff --git a/contrib/emacs/.gitignore b/contrib/emacs/.gitignore
deleted file mode 100644
index c531d9867f..00
--- a/contrib/emacs/.gitignore
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-*.elc
diff --git a/contrib/emacs/Makefile b/contrib/emacs/Makefile
deleted file mode 100644
index 24d9312941..00
--- a/contrib/emacs/Makefile
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,21 +0,0 @@
-## Build and install stuff
-
-EMACS = emacs
-
-ELC = git.elc git-blame.elc
-INSTALL ?= install
-INSTALL_ELC = $(INSTALL) -m 644
-prefix ?= $(HOME)
-emacsdir = $(prefix)/share/emacs/site-lisp
-RM ?= rm -f
-
-all: $(ELC)
-
-install: all
-   $(INSTALL) -d $(DESTDIR)$(emacsdir)
-   $(INSTALL_ELC) $(ELC:.elc=.el) $(ELC) $(DESTDIR)$(emacsdir)
-
-%.elc: %.el
-   $(EMACS) -batch -f batch-byte-compile $<
-
-clean:; $(RM) $(ELC)
diff --git a/contrib/emacs/README b/contrib/emacs/README
index 82368bdbff..977a16f1e3 100644
--- a/contrib/emacs/README
+++ b/contrib/emacs/README
@@ -1,30 +1,24 @@
-This directory contains various modules for Emacs support.
+This directory used to contain various modules for Emacs support.
 
-To make the modules available to Emacs, you should add this directory
-to your load-path, and then require the modules you want. This can be
-done by adding to your .emacs something like this:
+These were added shortly after Git was first released. Since then
+Emacs's own support for Git got better than what was offered by these
+modes. There are also popular 3rd-party Git modes such as Magit which
+offer replacements for these.
 
-  (add-to-list 'load-path ".../git/contrib/emacs")
-  (require 'git)
-