From: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>
To: Paul Rankin <hello@paulwrankin.com>, help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: RE: How to find when a feature was introduced
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2016 05:44:47 +0000 (UTC) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <6a92cb61-53ac-4538-a0ac-5873851bdc85@default> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1467953596.3500300.660244737.0CDCE013@webmail.messagingengine.com>
> > > So now I need to tell my students gnu-apl-mode will not run in emacsen
> > > less than version X How to find out X?
>
> M-x view-emacs-news RET C-s FEATURE
That works for some features/functions/variables/..., but not for
others. It depends on how well and even whether the thing in question
is called out clearly in the NEWS.
FWIW -
I keep multiple Emacs binaries and check them when needed. But I do
that because I maintain some of my libraries across multiple releases.
(Many people will not bother to do this.)
If I have a library that fundamentally makes use of some feature that
is only available starting with release N.M then that's the minimum
release I support for that library - e.g., `apu.el' is Emacs 24+
because it is all about Unicode.
But if a library just makes incidental use of some feature - it is
not essential to the library, then I support older releases that
don't provide that feature, and I conditionalize its use within
the library using `fboundp', `boundp', `featurep', or even a
release-number check, whichever is most specific but still
sufficient to distinguish whatever is involved.
Yes, that means extra maintenance work. But there are lots of
Emacs users (most!) who do _not_ use the latest release. I see
too many libraries (IMHO) that evolve to gratuitously use recent
constructs, which means some of their users can lose the
possibility of using them.
By "gratuitously" here I mean that the library maintainer and the
library itself do not really gain anything important by such a
change. Obviously, if a new feature enables you to do something
really different (e.g. bidi support) or really better, then there
is no reason not to take advantage of it.
But many changes I see are little more than cosmetic, and if such
a case throws library users by the wayside then I think that's a
waste. On the other hand, it can make things easier for a library
maintainer not to have to worry about supporting more than the
latest release...
YMMV
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-07-08 5:44 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-07-08 4:28 How to find when a feature was introduced Rusi
2016-07-08 4:41 ` Kaushal Modi
2016-07-08 4:53 ` Paul Rankin
2016-07-08 5:44 ` Drew Adams [this message]
2016-07-08 16:40 ` Drew Adams
2016-07-09 18:21 ` Kaushal Modi
[not found] ` <mailman.936.1468088520.26859.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2016-07-10 6:51 ` Rusi
2016-07-08 6:43 ` Eli Zaretskii
2016-07-08 16:33 ` Kaushal Modi
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