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

[Daniel Shahaf <d.s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

dana wrote on Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 15:46:57 -0500:
> 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.

Why need it be objective?  If there's consensus on this list that
something should be added, add it; else, leave it out.  That's a high
bar, so it'll keep the result conservative/minimal.

> 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.
> 

We could have, say, an autoloaded function called zsh-defaults, and have
the default zshrc consist of a (possibly commented-out) call to that
function.  That's similar to what Vim does nowadays, with
a «defaults.vim» runtime file that people can choose to source.

Cheers,

Daniel