Re: Policy proposal: Do not move existing functions/macros except in major version increments

[Bastien <bzg@gnu.org>]

Hi Adam,

Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net> writes:

> The relatively recent moving of org-get-outline-path to org-refile.el
> has caused breakage in Org itself in several places, e.g.
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2020-04/msg00260.html
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2020-04/msg00259.html
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2020-04/msg00261.html

ahem, my bad.  I made this bold (and wrong) move, and I broke code out
of org-mode.

I understand your proposal, and it's always good to be reminded that
many people depend on Org's code out there.  It is not easy to spend
time working on Org *and* tracking all these interesting extensions.

I agree with Nicolas that we should not put more constraints on the
shoulders of Org current developers, especially because their time is 
limited - and obviously not enough to cope with every request.

That said, we can make it easier for third-party developers to know
what changes will be released in the future.

See the "Upcoming changes" in https://updates.orgmode.org

You can subscribe to this RSS feed:
https://updates.orgmode.org/feed/changes

Or check the data directly:
https://updates.orgmode.org/data/changes

To announce the change you see, I just used this email header:

  X-Woof-Change: 9092c289 9.4

That is the commit number where the change happens and the version
in which the change will be released.

The list of upcoming changes is emptied when a new major released is
done, because the changes are then advertized in this file, as usual:
https://orgmode.org/Changes.html

I think that's a tiny distributed effort for developers and a easy
way to track changes for third-party developers.

Best,

-- 
 Bastien