Re: obsoleted vs acinclude tool / Re: Masterplan

[Peter Simons]

Guido Draheim writes:

 > [obsolete macros]

I am summarizing your points into policy:

    We add a category "Obsolete", into which macros that have been
    obsoleted will be moved. They will not disappear from either the
    index or the distribution.

    After moving them, we add an expiry date to the macro so that we
    don't carry around baggage for all eternity. When the macro
    expires, we move it into a "History" section that is not included
    in the distribution. 

Or do we just delete it?

    In addition, macros in the "Obsolete" category will be marked as
    being obsolete in the description and in the m4 source code, in
    order to allow tools like acinclude or aclocal to recognize them
    and to warn the user about it. The obsoletion marker will state
    one of the following reasons:

        * Has been replaced by 'foobar'.

        * Has been included in the Autoconf distribution as 'barfoo'.

        * Known deficits.

    More detailed reasoning might be added to the macro's description
    by the maintainer.


 > [...] sometimes a user wishes to rename a macro, or perhaps that is
 > just a result of the wish to modify the call-synopsis or behaviour
 > slightly. The old macro is not invalid by that, but it shall be
 > moved out of being used in the current projects.

This is an interesting problem. Here comes more policy:

    Updates to already accepted macros MUST NOT break backwards
    compatibility. If the new version has to be used in an in
    different way than the original version, or if the new version
    produces its results in a different way than the original version,
    the author must submit the update under a new macro name. The
    original version will be obsoleted.


This raises another interesting question: If we enforce this kind of
policy, do we any longer _need_ the macro to have a "version" string?


Peter


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