[tarsius]

When a breaking change is made on Emacs' development branch, whether intentionally or not, and some users voice concerns about that change, then the change isn't reverted the minute those concerns are raised. The pros and cons are discussed, different solutions are implemented and improved, and finally a compromise is found.

Users raising their concern started three days ago. That's not enough for this process to have concluded already.

Here's a recent message by Eli (and the message he is responding to).

    > I'm hoping the old behavior stays the default and the new behaviour
    > is what users can opt in with a variable.
    > 
    > If that is what normally happens for much less disruptive changes,
    > why isn't it happening for this deep impacting one?
    
    Because the original discussion of these changes, between two people
    who were interested and involved, indicated that the new behavior
    makes much more sense than the old one.  Now, that others chimed in
    with the opposite views, we are still discussing what should be the
    behavior, and once that is concluded, we can talk about the defaults.

So I think this has been blown way out of proportion. IMO there are some serious issues in how Emacs is developed. I don't have a solution but I think that us users/package-maintainers thinking to ourselves "gee there sure are a lot of stubborn people on emacs-devel, what's wrong with them?" and then the second a change is made that we strongly disagree with, we start behaving like the world is ending, that might be a problem. This is how maintainers get defensive (you might have noticed that in the projects that you maintain).

[yaantc]

Thank you @tarsius! Couldn't have said it better.

To add, I have issues with the attitude shown by the blog author.

If you use the development branch, you can't raise hell when there's a breaking change: it's to be expected!

Then it's fine to disagree on some change and discuss this. I read the email thread, and I do not see "arrogance". Just strong disagreement. So yes, converging will take a bit of time... Calling publicly someone "arrogant" for not folding back to your view, and trying to raise the crowd (a good part of whom won't read the thread to make their own opinion) looks like bullying to me.

Saying that his patch to make the change optional has been disregarded, when it was rejected because it not only made the change optional (that would have been OK, and a patch for this asked for) but removed other changes is not honest.

Lastly, pointing out one person to blame when the whole discussion is done with the Emacs maintainers in the loop is also a no-go in my book.

As a close to 30 years Emacs user, thank you to all its contributors! (and to Thierry, as long time Helm user) May their skin by thick, it's unfortunately sometimes needed :-P

[Y_Y]

> Calling publicly someone "arrogant" for not folding back to your view, and trying to raise the crowd (a good part of whom won't read the thread to make their own opinion) looks like bullying to me.

Isn't this a bit of a loaded take too? I'm sure the author wouldn't agree that what they wanted was for Thierry to "fold back". I agree with your criticisms here in direction but not in magnitude, in fact it appears to me like you're comitting the same sin of misrepresenting your opponent to enhance your position.

[kazinator]

> If you use the development branch, you can't raise hell when there's a breaking change: it's to be expected!

If nobody raises hell on a development branch, the change will have a way of making it to the master branch.

[disruptiveink]

Eh. I don't think that argument holds water, unfortunately. Too often I've seen the "it's just a beta/unstable version, it's not finished, you can't raise issues like this!" attitude as an issue to shut down any form of discussion, or worse, to avoid having to think about the consequences of some action.

Of course, nearly 100% of the times the behaviour people were complaining about will be part of the stable release. There is no magical moment where things just magically get sorted pre-release unless people voice feedback, especially if it's intended behaviour, as it's very much the case here. So call me jaded, when someone says "it's just the main branch, don't complain!" I just hear "I will do whatever I want and when the new release rolls in everyone will just have to deal with it." Which is totally fair if that's how you want to run your project, just don't pretend otherwise.

An extra one, which isn't the case here but makes me roll my eyes every times it happens is the outrage of "how dare you raise an issue that was caused by a new pre-release iOS/MacOS version and very much seems to be an intended change in the OS behaviour, we don't support that!!", only for it to turn into the usual scramble "oh no, our software is broken on the new iPhones, who could have forseen this!!?" hours after the release version starts hitting the masses.

[eduction]

>Users raising their concern started three days ago. That's not enough for this process to have concluded already… So I think this has been blown way out of proportion.

This reads as contradictory to me. On the one hand you’re saying that user response is a key input to making a final decision. Then you’re criticizing a negative user response as blowing things out of proportion. But if the users didn’t react, the original thing they are upset about probably would have happened, per your own description of the process.

I saw a very similar process unfold with clojure-mode, where rms floated the idea of rewriting it and taking control of the name from the original longtime author, a Clojure community member. The reason this didn’t happen is people got upset and posted to the list - but those very people who caused it not to happen were told they were blowing things out of proportion. So that doesn’t seem like a very meaningful criticism.

[aeturnum]

I think the thing being criticized is the tenor of the pushback. The suggestion that, because the blog author (Eshel Yaron)'s patch wasn't accepted and the change is still currently in, that the maintainers are "insistent not to budge" and that this "demonstrates clear disrespect for Emacs user preferences, and indeed their freedom."

The Yaron's attitude seems to suggest that there's an easy right answer here and that it's the thing he wants (and Emacs does now). A lot of his upset seems not to be about the idea of an option to support the new behavior (which he wrote a patch to support!), but about the attitude with which this was introduced. In return, he's coming at this issue with an attitude that seemed fit to match what he thinks the maintainers are bringing.

So that's why it's important to ask if this blog post has misunderstood the arc of changes to Emacs. If the pushback will probably result in the current default staying in the editor. Because assuming the old behavior is best, even though some maintainers like the new behavior, is just as high handed as forcing the new behavior.

[achikin]

Here is the recap of someone is interested https://metaredux.com/posts/2023/09/09/clojure-support-in-em...

[jbluepolarbear]

That’s a bad process. The review of the feature should start before it’s merged into main branch, not after. It totally reasonable for people to be upset with a breaking feature in main branch without discussing it with the community at large. Changes merged in like this are how long standing tool lose community support.

[tsimionescu]

The review of the feature was happening in public on the mailing list. All those who contributed to that review had their concerns addressed, and the change was merged into the main branch (which is the development branch of Emacs). Only afterwards did others complain.

[kazinator]

On the job, I wouldn't go implementing whatever pops into my head without input from my manager and product management.

Even if the change could easily pass a technical review and get merged.

First you have to determine: do we need this for the product? If this change is made, does it break user workflows? What difficulties will users have if they pick up this change?

[Ferret7446]

I disagree. The Emacs community has, at least historically, strongly valued backward compatibility. Breaking existing users is just about the worst thing you could do in Emacs.

If we aren't strongly considering reverting a breaking change immediately, that signals that the Emacs devs no longer value backward compatibility as highly, which means Emacs is abandoning many of its existing users.

https://www.murilopereira.com/the-values-of-emacs-the-neovim...

Core values matter. The Emacs maintainers did something that violated a core value, and the community is rightfully offended.

[jeremyjh]

> So I think this has been blown way out of proportion.

If this has happened as described in the OP then I’m worried about the health of emacs. There was controversy before it was merged to master, and they merged it anyway. Breaking user workflows and not even making it optional, much less opt-in comes across as a callous disregard for user experience.

[nanny]

>If this has happened as described in the OP

It's not. The article is bad and wrong. It preemptively tries to dodge such accusations, but most of the hyperbole and "emotions" are just downright lies.

btw the person you responded to is the author of magit. I think his opinion should be weighted more heavily that the author of this article.

[rightbyte]

Ye once the devs go user hostile it is all down hill from there.

Especially in a project like Emacs, where every efficinado has their own really custom config.

I mean, reading the Emacs docs it is written in a way that make you feel like color display and a mouse is cutting edge hardware and optional.

It is a very conservative project ...

[NeutralForest]

I'm fully with you here; let the process happen and the discussion between contributors and maintainers happen before talking about "BAD NEWS".

[kazinator]

In my organization (embedded development in VOIP area) we revert breaking changes immediately, as soon as the breakage is identified.

Also, same in every company I've ever worked in that had any kind of process.

[bachmeier]

It would make a lot more sense to have a discussion before breaking long-used behavior. I'd use Emacs a lot more, but you honestly can't trust it. The developers don't see a problem with breaking things users rely on.

[rrix2]

This is a pre-release commit not in any released version.

[ParetoOptimal]

> I'd use Emacs a lot more, but you honestly can't trust it. The developers don't see a problem with breaking things users rely on.

For me, emacs developers breaks things for users the least and highly value backwards compatibility.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> gee there sure are a lot of stubborn people on emacs-[%]

I have been watching Emacs vs Vi wars for decades. People take this stuff seriously.

In my case, I tend to use GUI editors, whenever possible (or Nano/Pico, if absolutely forced to). I know, I know, I'm a wimp. Guilty as charged.