Re: Contributors and maintainers

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: address@hidden (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)
> Cc: address@hidden
> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2015 19:22:10 +0200
> 
> >> Can you please show a previous quote by you which serves to show that
> >> you understood the reason I did not want to use shell-quote-argument,
> >> and where you directly addressed that exact reason (either with a change
> >> to shell-quote-argument, *or* an explanation of why you disagree with
> >> that exact reason)?
> >
> > Everything I wrote serves to show that.  I always responded to your
> > arguments.
> >
> >> When you show such a quote, then maybe we can look at it and see how it
> >> could be that you feel my concern has been addressed, yet I don't.
> >
> > Not only I feel that your concerns has been addressed, everyone else
> > here does.
> 
> It would be great if you could provide a quote like I mentioned.

OK.  Here are some:

Quote #1:

  > > On POSIX shells, shell-quote-argument is just as safe as
  > > shqq--quote-string, and on non-POSIX shells it works better. So it's a
  > > win, in both readability and in portability, to use
  > > shell-quote-argument.
  > 
  > Fixing it does not seem easy at all given I can't trust
  > shell-quote-argument.

  You can trust it.

  > And please be realistic in the amount of trust we can put on the
  > complicated implementations for non-Unix shells.  I can't judge them
  > myself since I don't know the syntax of those shells at all.  Does
  > anyone here know their syntax comprehensively, or checked the
  > implementation against the documentation of those shells?

  Yes, we do.  Yes, we have.

Quote #2:

  > > It might be simpler, but it's wrong, because the result is only
  > > correct for Posix shells.
  > >
  > > Please do use shell-quote-argument instead.
  > 
  > It's also simpler than the POSIX section of shell-quote-argument.

  Simpler doesn't mean correct.

  > (defun shell-quote-argument (argument)
  >   [...] (cond [...] (t
  >     (if (equal argument "")
  >         "''"
  >       ;; Quote everything except POSIX filename characters.
  >       ;; This should be safe enough even for really weird shells.
  >       (replace-regexp-in-string
  >        "\n" "'\n'"
  >        (replace-regexp-in-string "[^-0-9a-zA-Z_./\n]" "\\\\\\&" 
argument))))))
  > 
  > I wonder what "really weird shells" this refers to?

  The set of characters special to an arbitrary shell is not known in
  advance.

  > Certainly not csh, the mechanism it uses for newlines doesn't work
  > there.

  What did you try that didn't work with csh?

Quote #3:

  > Quoting RMS, coincidentally from a couple days ago:
  > 
  >     The policy is non-GNU systems are secondary, and lower priority than
  >     the GNU system, but we are glad to include support for them in GNU
  >     packages if users contribute the necessary code -- provided that
  >     code isn't a maintenance problem for us.
  > 
  >     The maintenainers of any particular package are the ones who judge
  >     whether that code is a maintenance problem, since they are the ones
  >     it would be a problem for.

  I don't see how this is relevant for the issue at hand, since the
  necessary code (the shell-quote-argument function) was already
  contributed to Emacs years ago, and is used in many places in core
  Emacs.  There's no extra effort needed to support more platforms, just
  replace one function with another.

  > I generally don't want to take responsibility of my code being used on
  > non-GNU/non-POSIX systems, but if I can share the responsibility then
  > that's fine.

  You are sharing the responsibility with a long line of Emacs
  developers, all of whom use this function.  I don't see anything you
  should worry about, really.

As you see, each response is directly related to your text that I
cite.  I cannot prove to you that I understood what you were saying,
but you can ask any neutral person to read this and tell you what they
think about that.  From my side, I can assure you I completely
understood everything that you said.