vm team mailing list archive

[Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just looking at some of the compiler warnings......

Can I have some clarity on exactly what level of bacwards version
compatibility we want? I think this is relevant because it can impact on how
we 'fix' some of the warnings. For example, if the warning is for something
that is now obsolete in versions we support, we can just remove it or change
it to whatever it should now be. However, if it is something that is still
part of a version we want to support, then we probably need to put some
version branching, i.e. use eval-and-compile etc. 

Secondly, if we do need to put version dependent code in, can we assume VM is
always run as a compiled binary i.e. can use eval-when-compile rather than
eval-and-compile or would it be preferrable to just use eval-and-compile? We
currently have both in the code. For this situation, I would tend to go with
eval-and-compile as it is sometimes useful when debugging/developing to run
interpreted and not byte compiled code. 

Is using these two macros the correct way to handle version dependent code?

Thoughts, comments?

Tim

PS I also think we probably should put something on the VM homepage or
launchpad site about support versions.

PPS. My backwards version support preference would be for emacs22, but no
further. My rationale is that Emacs handling of things like UTF-8 and
multibyte changed considerably from this point onwards and maintaining
previous version compatibility is going to become more difficult, especially
as we move more and more to a UTF-8 based environment. 

PPPS. I find this encoding stuff complex and confusing and really don't
understand it that well, though I've been lazy and an arrogant english speaker! 

From: Uday S Reddy <u.s.reddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Vm] compilation warnings
Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:10:33 +0100

> Dear Ulrich and Tim,
> 
> I have now turned on in the trunk, the general compilation warnings of
> Emacs 23 (but not "suspicious" warnings)
> 
> I have fixed most of them, but there are a few tricky ones left, to do
> with default-enable-multibyte-characters, make-local-hook, focus-frame
> and such things.  I would appreciate your help in fixing these
> remaining ones.
> 
> The "suspicious" warnings are mostly to do with the use of
> save-excursion.  I have been fixing some of them off and on, but they
> are tedious and dangerous to fix.  So, we will keep them as a
> long-range project to work on.
> 
> Cheers,
> Uday
> 
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