Re: Readings for an emacs package maintainer ?

[Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc>]

> There are other tips in the Elisp manual, node Coding
> Conventions. These, for instance:
>
>  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))
>
>  Redefining or advising an Emacs primitive is a bad idea.  It may do
>  the right thing for a particular program, but there is no telling
>  what other programs might break as a result.

It's funny that I pointed Xavier to this very node in March 2008 when
reporting such a bug in color-theme (see https://gna.org/bugs/?9494)
which overwrites `replace-in-string' in an incompatible way which
breaks Gnus, Muse, emacs-jabber, etc.  Unfortunately Xavier didn't fix
this up to now, AFAIK.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
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