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  • Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason's avatar
    git{,-blame}.el: remove old bitrotting Emacs code · 6d5ed483
    Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason authored and Junio C Hamano's avatar Junio C Hamano committed
    The git-blame.el mode has been superseded by Emacs's own
    vc-annotate (invoked by C-x v g). Users of the git.el mode are now
    much better off using either Magit or the Git backend for Emacs's own
    VC mode.
    
    These modes were added over 10 years ago when Emacs's own Git support
    was much less mature, and there weren't other mature modes in the wild
    or shipped with Emacs itself.
    
    These days these modes have few if any users, and users of git aren't
    well served by us shipping these (some OS's install them alongside git
    by default, which is confusing and leads users astray).
    
    So let's remove these per Alexandre Julliard's message to the
    ML[1]. If someone still wants these for some reason they're better
    served by hosting these elsewhere (e.g. on ELPA), instead of us
    distributing them with git.
    
    However, since downstream packagers such as Debian are packaging this
    as git-el it's less disruptive to still carry these files as Elisp
    code that'll error out with a message suggesting alternatives, rather
    than drop the files entirely[2].
    
    Then rather than receive a cryptic load error when they upgrade
    existing users will get an error directing them to the README file, or
    to just stop requiring these modes. I think it makes sense to link to
    GitHub's hosting of contrib/emacs/README (which'll be updated by the
    time users see this) so they don't have to hunt down the packaged
    README on their local system.
    
    1. "Re: [PATCH] git.el: handle default excludesfile
       properly" (87muzlwhb0.fsf@winehq.org) --
       https://public-inbox.org/git/87muzlwhb0.fsf@winehq.org/
    
    2. "Re: [PATCH v3] git{,-blame}.el: remove old bitrotting Emacs
       code" (20180327165751.GA4343@aiede.svl.corp.google.com) --
       https://public-inbox.org/git/20180327165751.GA4343@aiede.svl.corp.google.com/
    
    
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarÆvar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJunio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
    6d5ed483