Hi Nicolas, and everyone else. I have just investigated what actually happens is someone has a customize setting for a variable in his/her setup, and then the variable is changed to a defconst behind his/her back. The result was very surprising to me: customize-set-variables still does set the variable to the stored value. Changing a different customize variable and selecting "apply and change" updates the init file where customize-set-variables is stored, and interestingly still preserves the customize setting for the variable that now has become a defconst.
This surprised me, and it seems to indicate that existing configurations would not break. Furthermore, I have looked at the old customization survey at http://orgmode.org/worg/org-configs/org-customization-survey.html It turns out that none of the variables Nicolas listed seems to have been customized by the people participating in this survey. Tanking these together, I am now inclined to change my view and to let Nicolas make his proposed change. What I would like to request is that we try to make Org still work if these variables do in fact have a different value - but that is what Nicolas already said. So: IF YOU HAVE CUSTOMIZED any of this variables, I'd like to hear about it. Otherwise, I now think that the proposal is actually good and should move ahead. - Carsten On Oct 23, 2013, at 10:56 AM, Nicolas Goaziou <n.goaz...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > Carsten Dominik writes: > >> can you remind me what the bug was? The taskjuggler issue? > > Correct. I will fix it today. > >> Yes, as I said, I do see all these problems, but I also feel the >> responsibility >> to break as few as possible existing configurations. > > I understand. Though, almost any serious change breaks some existing > configuration. It is unfortunate, but I hope it will not prevent us from > correcting past, and future, mistakes. Without that right to be wrong, > we'd better plan Org development a very long time ahead and cross > fingers hoping we will never fail. Don't cross too hard. > >> If you want, I can take a shot at documenting this properly. > > I'm not convinced by that documentation thing, i.e. "we allow you to > change the string, but we remind you that you shouldn't do it". It even > goes against my initial suggestion, so I cannot say I "want" anything in > that area. > > Unless, that is, you're talking about a deprecation warning, e.g. "In > future releases, this variable will not be customizable anymore, so be > careful when changing its default value". But, IIUC, that's not what you > want. > > > Regards, > > -- > Nicolas Goaziou
