Re: config.status has been broken by issue 5780 "Accept GUILE 2 without extra configure options"

[David Kastrup]

Jonas Hahnfeld <address@hidden> writes:

> Am Samstag, den 07.03.2020, 10:37 +0100 schrieb Werner LEMBERG:
>> >>> Is there anybody who recently built with a non-system version of
>> 
>> >>> Guile-1.8 intentionally?
>> 
>> >>
>> 
>> >> I do this all the time.
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> > So how did you do it last week?
>> 
>> 
>> I updated my build script, see below.  Note that I install texi2html
>> 1.82 and guile 1.8.8 in `/uar/local/opt`.
>> 
>> >> Usually, I try to insist on good documentation if people implement
>> 
>> >> stuff differently.  This time it slipped my attention that
>> 
>> >> Han-Wen's changes w.r.t. pkg-config are not properly described.
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> > In this case, I don't think it is sufficient to add documentation
>> 
>> > somewhere (though necessary).  People also need to get guided there
>> 
>> > instead of stealthily making previously working options do nothing.
>> 
>> 
>> As I said: I believe the proper action is to make LilyPond's
>> `configure` script emit a warning if it finds GUILE_CONFIG set.
>
> I disagree: Why do we have to keep everything compatible for a new
> *major* release like it used to be in the past? That's very prohibitive
> of any substantial change.

We are not talking about "keep everything compatible".  We are talking
about making changes in a manner where they don't trip people up.  They
way to deprecate a way of doing things is not to _start_ by pretending
it never existed and silently ignore attempts to use it.  At the same
time, by the way, not adapting any bit of documentation.

For better or worse, deprecation takes work.  That's why we have, for
example, convert-ly.  That's a user-level feature, but basically
asserting that people able to compile LilyPond have to be able to deal
with anything we throw at them without comment is not going to go down
well with regard of keeping LilyPond supported by, say, major GNU/Linux
distributions.

-- 
David Kastrup
My replies have a tendency to cause friction.  To help mitigating
damage, feel free to forward problematic posts to me adding a subject
like "timeout 1d" (for a suggested timeout of 1 day) or "offensive".