bug#6997: Loading w32-fns under X11 signals an error

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: 6997@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:51:20 +0200
> 
> I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to argue here.

I'm not trying to argue at all, just trying to understand what you
want to be done about w32-fns.el.

> It's been policy
> for a long time now that loading files should be harmless, so many files
> were changed so that (load "foo") doesn't enable foo-mode any more, but
> instead just defines foo-mode (and then foo-mode is marked auto-loaded
> so the user can just call (foo-mode 1) rather than (load "foo") in his
> .emacs).
> Clearly, load foo.el will make changes in that it will define new
> functions and variables, may add things to debug-ignored-errors and
> whatnot.

But many .el files have top-level expressions other than defun and
defvar.  These don't just define functions and variables, they
actually change the behavior.  w32-fns.el does that as well, but it is
not the only one.  I understand that you want all these top-level
expressions be conditioned by w32?

> > That's rather a narrow need.  Sounds like lots of labor to gain very
> > little (why does it matter to have symbols that begin with a `w32-'?).
> 
> Yes, it's a lot of work for fairly little gain.  Note that I bumped into
> it because my code couldn't care less that "w32-" is special, not
> because I specifically wanted to have symbols starting with "w32-".

How about teaching your code not to load any file that has w32 (or
dos, or ns, for that matter) in its name?  Or perhaps we should have a
list of platform-specific .el files that are not "safe" for loading on
other platforms?  Maybe that will be easier than modifying all those
to make them "Stefan-harmless"?