Re: Using custom as a type checker:- ramble

["Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu>]

> > What I would much rather have is a way to load a normal
> > .emacs and automatically have all the `setq's checked as
> > above.  The checking could also include obsolescence and
> > things like that.
> 
> > I.e. I don't want to change the .emacs code at all, but I'd
> > like to have a more-or-less generic way to add helpful
> > analysis of the code so as to give useful information to the
> > user about suspicious customizations.

> Well I would agree that this would be preferable. 

> What worries me, though, is the complexity of this task. I don't know
> about you, but my .emacs (and other files that I call from .emacs) is
> huge, and often complex, so interpreting this would be complex. Adding
> a "custom-setq" function would potentially be very simple. 

It should be possible to get the desired result without implementing
an elisp interpreter in elisp, but instead by temporarily rebinding
`setq' as a macro (and things like that).

Another alternative is to put the checking into the byte-compiler
(which already takes care of traversing elisp code) and then
byte-compile the .emacs file (not for speed but for sanity checks).
This might be the best option.


        Stefan