Re: declare-function in files from Gnus (hashcash.el, imap.el)

[Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu>]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> writes:

  > On Sun, Dec 02 2007, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
  > 
  > > Such files can just add a 1 line compatibility code:
  > >
  > > (unless (fboundp 'declare-function) (defmacro declare-function (&rest r)))
  > 
  > I think this is not a good idea...
  > 
  > ,----[ (info "(elisp)Coding Conventions") ]
  > |    * If a package needs to define an alias or a new function for
  > |      compatibility with some other version of Emacs, name it with the
  > |      package prefix, not with the raw name with which it occurs in the
  > |      other version.  Here is an example from Gnus, which provides many
  > |      examples of such compatibility issues.
  > | 
  > |           (defalias 'gnus-point-at-bol
  > |             (if (fboundp 'point-at-bol)
  > |                 'point-at-bol
  > |               'line-beginning-position))
  > `----
  > 
  > [In Gnus, we had some bug report from XEmacs users that was very hard
  > to find because some XEmacs package defined an un-prefixed Emacs
  > function so that the test (fboundp ...) returned t although the
  > functionality was not as expected.]

This situation is not similar, declare-function does not perform any
active action. Why do you think it would matter?