From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
To: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
Cc: acorallo@gnu.org, 66750@debbugs.gnu.org,
monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, stefankangas@gmail.com
Subject: bug#66750: Unhelpful text in C-h v for variables with a lambda form as value
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2023 21:38:36 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <838r7md237.fsf@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <ZT1QIC9T__WSn87L@ACM> (message from Alan Mackenzie on Sat, 28 Oct 2023 18:17:04 +0000)
> Cc: 66750@debbugs.gnu.org, Andrea Corallo <acorallo@gnu.org>,
> Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>, acm@muc.de
> Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2023 18:17:04 +0000
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
>
> > but that's 127kB, so ... could [you] briefly describe the overall design
> > (IOW, how it's seen by ELisp programmers, byte-compiler hackers, and
> > ELisp users)?
>
> Certainly. Each lambda expression has (usually) a defun within which it
> is defined. Sometimes it's in a defvar, or defcustom. That
> @dfn{defining symbol} is recorded in the lambda form in one of three
> ways:
> (i) For a cons form, it's (cadr form), a new field inserted between the
> symbol `lambda' and the argument list.
> (ii) For a byte-compiled form, it's (aref form 5), this new field going
> after the doc string and before any interactive form in the compiled
> form.
> (iii) For a native-compiled subr it's (subr-native-defining-symbol
> subr), a function defined in data.c. It accesses a new field in struct
> Lisp_Subr called defining_symbol.
>
> There are lots of detailed changes in eval.c and bytecomp.el (and
> friends). Also the macro `lambda' in subr.el has been amended to insert
> the current global defining-symbol if there isn't already a non-nil
> symbol in that position. cl-print-object/compiled-function has been
> amended to print the defining-symbol, and there is a new
> cl-print-object/subr which does the same.
>
> The intention is that compiled objects from earlier Emacsen can still be
> loaded and run by feature/named-lambdas, just without the defining
> symbols (which will appear to be nil).
>
> > Also, what other approaches have you considered/tried and what were the
> > problems you've encountered, if any?
>
> feature/named-lambdas was originally intended for use in backtraces.
>
> For the current bug, I've considered individually replacing each lambda
> with a named defun, so that C-h v will show that name rather than an
> unhelpful byte/native compiled anonymous function. That would be a lot
> of work - my scripting found 63 defcustoms set to lambdas, 29 uses in
> doc strings, and 215 suspicious occurrences with ordinary variables
> (quite a few of which will be harmless). Amending all these (I guess
> around 200 lambdas) would probably be too much work.
Thanks. However, now I'm confused: what exactly does this feature
give us, if it doesn't handle all the lambdas in the Emacs tree and
(AFAIU) will not affect lambdas in third-party packages? Which
lambdas will now have a defining symbol, and which will not?
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-10-28 18:38 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 44+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-10-25 17:09 bug#66750: Unhelpful text in C-h v for variables with a lambda form as value Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-25 20:53 ` Andrea Corallo
2023-10-27 11:35 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-28 9:27 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-28 15:04 ` Stefan Kangas
2023-10-28 15:59 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-28 16:26 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-10-28 16:57 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-28 17:17 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-10-28 18:17 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-28 18:38 ` Eli Zaretskii [this message]
2023-10-28 18:59 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-28 19:13 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-10-28 19:59 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-29 4:14 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-10-29 11:25 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-29 16:32 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-10-29 18:50 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-10-29 21:47 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-10-30 9:44 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-01 12:47 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-11-01 15:03 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-01 18:11 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-11-01 20:30 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-01 22:46 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-11-02 6:13 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-11-02 9:37 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-02 10:09 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-11-02 11:52 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-02 13:50 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-11-02 15:55 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-02 16:50 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-11-02 17:12 ` Andrea Corallo
2023-11-02 21:44 ` Stefan Kangas
2023-11-02 22:24 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-03 3:20 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-11-03 19:46 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-03 22:18 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-11-04 15:31 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-26 12:32 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-27 17:23 ` Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2024-03-25 12:03 ` Alan Mackenzie
2023-11-02 20:53 ` Stefan Kangas
2023-11-02 21:20 ` bug#66750: help-split-fundoc (was: bug#66750: Unhelpful text in C-h v for variables with a lambda form as value) Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
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