bug#38583: [PATCH] 27.0.50; Add unattended spell-checking to checkdoc

[Damien Cassou]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> In general, yes.  But you can try convincing me that it is so
> important to have in Emacs 27 that we should make an exception.  I
> considered this, and concluded that it's a minor convenience feature.
> But maybe I'm missing something?

Integrating into Emacs 27 late in the process is risky because my code
could have introduced subtle bugs inside checkdoc and I would not like
to be responsible for a delay in the release.  That being said and
checkdoc being automatically activated by flycheck (which I believe many
people use), I think we will find bugs in my code quite fast if there
are any.  Moreover, I think that improving the overall quality of Emacs
code is important and every little step in this direction would be
helpful.

I'm not sure this is convincing enough but I would have tried :-D.

FYI, this work on checkdoc is part of a larger piece of work I've
started some years ago on improving the quality of Emacs packages.  Here
are some of my activities in this area:

- opening issues and sending patches on Emacs core regarding checkdoc
  (e.g., this one, bug#37063, bug#37034);

- giving very detailed reviews of packages sent to melpa (e.g.,
  https://github.com/melpa/melpa/pull/5451);

- rewriting melpa's CONTRIBUTING.org from scratch
  (https://github.com/melpa/melpa/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.org);

- collaborating with emake's developer
  (https://github.com/vermiculus/emake.el/pull/8);

- writing makel (https://gitea.petton.fr/DamienCassou/makel);

- doing a conference on the subject at EmacsConf 2019
  (https://media.emacsconf.org/2019/16.html);

- prototyping a linting engine for everyone to easily write lint rules
  (https://gitlab.com/lintel/lintel).



-- 
Damien Cassou

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without
losing enthusiasm." --Winston Churchill