About cl-lib and `eval-when-compile'

About cl-lib and `eval-when-compile'

[Xue Fuqiao]

Since the old `cl.el' does not use a clean namespace, Emacs has a
policy that packages distributed with Emacs must not load `cl' at run
time.  If I use the new cl-lib library, do I have to use
`eval-when-compile'?  Can anybody help?  Thanks.

-- 
Best regards, Xue Fuqiao.
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/XueFuqiao

Re: About cl-lib and `eval-when-compile'

[Stefan Monnier]

> Since the old `cl.el' does not use a clean namespace, Emacs has a
> policy that packages distributed with Emacs must not load `cl' at run
> time.  If I use the new cl-lib library, do I have to use
> `eval-when-compile'?  Can anybody help?  Thanks.

There's a misunderstanding: there was never any particular need to use
`eval-when-compile' with CL.  What there was is that CL was tolerated
only if used at compile-time (i.e. you could use its macros, but not
its functions).
There's no such problem with `cl-lib', so you can require `cl-lib' both
within or without `eval-when-compile'.  If you only use `cl-lib' macros,
then it's much better to wrap it in `eval-when-compile' so that cl-lib
won't unnecessarily be loaded when you use the package.


        Stefan