Re: Yikes! easy-menu-add is suddenly compiled to `ignore', without any warning.

[Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> In Emacs 28, easy-menu-add is now compiled to `ignore'.  This isn't
> friendly, particularly as in Emacs 27.2 and earlier, it just worked,
> without any warnings of impending obsoletion.

What does "working" mean here?  In Emacs 27.1, I have here:

    easy-menu-add is an alias for ‘ignore’ in ‘easymenu.el’.

> Why have we not followed the normal procedure here, by marking the
> function as obsolete, yet leaving it working, for one or two major
> versions, and only then removing it?

It is my understanding that this has followed the normal procedure for
obsoletion.

> This sudden removal of easy-menu-add will cause unnecessary annoyance
> amongst maintainers whose sources still use it.  Even in the Emacs
> sources there are 25 uses of the function.

This function is only relevant in XEmacs, so if this is important to you
I recommend changing any such call to say:

  (when (featurep 'xemacs)
    (easy-menu-add foo-menu))

The Emacs sources should already be updated accordingly.

> The warning message Emacs 28.1 gives out is particularly unfriendly and
> unhelpful.  It looks like this:
>
>     cc-mode.el:2591:4: Warning: `easy-menu-add' is an obsolete function
>     (as of 28.1); use `ignore' instead.

Yes, we could improve that message.

Perhaps it could say:  "it is not needed, so just remove it"