Re: unload-feature questions and thoughts

["Davis Herring" <herring@lanl.gov>]

> I interpret it as if "all the relevant global state changes" refers
> not just to hooks and `auto-mode-alist' (which is not mentioned in the
> docstring), but to all other things that `unload-feature' does, i.e.:
> killing local values of variables, f?makeunbound'ing symbols,
> restoring autoloads, etc.
>
> In other words, these sentences always make me think that either you
> use `FEATURE-unload-hook' and do all the work, or you don't use it and
> let `unload-feature' work its magic. Now, I *know* that's not what it
> says; it's just what I read :(

It seems to me that it is ambiguous, but that (as you said in your first
message) the function does the wrong thing anyway.  Perhaps, instead of
defining a return value for the hook, we should always do the heuristics
and have the FEATURE-unload-hook do only extra things, because I can't see
how the heuristics would do too much.  Moreover, the hook may modify
`unload-hook-features-list', even to nil, if it really needs to override
the heuristics.

Of course, a new doc string that describes the final behavior should be
written, but there's no point in writing two new ones.  (The doc should
probably list what the function does more explicitly, so that package
authors can see whether they need to write a hook.)

Davis

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