Re: Rewrite of zsh-newuser-install (Mikael's subthread)

[dana <dana@xxxxxxx>]

On 10 Apr 2021, at 06:23, Marlon <marlon.richert@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I have heard many criticism against OMZ, but it being “too magical” is new
> to me. What exactly do you mean with that?

Isn't it the *primary* criticism of OMZ? Most of its users seem to have zero
understanding of what it does or what separates it from zsh itself.

***

Aside from being busy, i've kind of stepped back from this project because
i've started to have some anxiety about it myself. Although i still feel we
can't be *too* minimalistic with a default config, since nobody would use it,
the proposed changes have gone beyond the scope i'd initially envisioned. At
the same time, i don't know how to make an 'objective' case for why x change
is desirable but y change is excessive.

I will say that we talked about this a bit on IRC (which is what prompted
Mikael to respond) and it seemed like most of the people in that discussion
felt that the proposed configuration is too complex to be of much help with
the stated goal of demonstrating how new users can modify their own config. I
hope it's not too arrogant to say, but it feels like if i as a zsh developer
don't understand what a lot of the config does without looking it up, it's
going to be nearly indecipherable to a beginner.

That ties in with another concern i have, which is that once a user installs
this configuration, it's basically untouchable to us. We can't really patch it
after the fact if there's a problem with it. The more complex the config is,
the greater the risk that we'll have an issue like that.

Those two observations lead me to feel that, if we do go forward with this,
maybe implementing it with prompt styles and auto-loaded functions would be
the way to go after all. That would hide some of the more overwhelming aspects
of the config from end users, and it would allow us to patch bugs or otherwise
improve things after the fact.

I feel silly for bringing up fundamental 'architecture' questions so late in
the game but maybe that's something that we should come to a consensus on
before we finalise exactly what options/styles/whatever will be set.

dana