Emacs 24.4 and advice

Emacs 24.4 and advice

[Trey Jackson]

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All,

I just downloaded Emacs 24.4 and found that the function 'ad-start-advice
was no longer defined.

I looked at the NEWS - no mention of the function being deprecated.
I looked at the "documentation" (comment section in advice.el) and all
references to start/stop had been removed.
I looked through the past year and a half of the devel mailing list - and
the only subject line that contained advice was the request to not remove
advice documentation.

I'm not reporting this as a bug, because I can just update my code to work
around this, but I do think that the changes made to this package could
have been handled more gracefully.


Whatever you think of people (over)using 'advice, the 'ad-start-advice and
'ad-stop-advice were a part of the tutorial and documentation in 24.3.


TJ

ps. This is my default signature, I didn't customize it for the purpose of
this post.

-- 
Trey Jackson
bigfaceworm@gmail.com

"Like any truly useful program, `hello' contains a built-in mail reader."
-- GNU's Bulletin, July 1996

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Re: Emacs 24.4 and advice

[Stefan Monnier]

> I looked at the NEWS - no mention of the function being deprecated.

Indeed, I never heard or seen anyone or any package refer to those two
functions (ad-start-advice and ad-stop-advice), so I didn't think it was
worth mentioning in NEWS (every release comes with loads of such "too
internal to merit mention" changes).  It looked like left over code from
a very long time ago.

What do you use them for?

> I'm not reporting this as a bug, because I can just update my code to work
> around this, but I do think that the changes made to this package could
> have been handled more gracefully.

The addition of nadvice required many changes in advice.el's internals
(these were indispensable in order for the two packages not to step on
each other's toes), so indeed there have been various compatibility
issues, and I've done my best to address them.

> Whatever you think of people (over)using 'advice, the 'ad-start-advice and
> 'ad-stop-advice were a part of the tutorial and documentation in 24.3.

Which tutorial are you referring to?


        Stefan

Re: Emacs 24.4 and advice

[Trey Jackson]

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On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 10:47 AM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:
>
> What do you use them for?


It's left over code, I presume they were there because, upon first read of
the documentation, it looked as though you needed to call (ad-start-advice)
to get things going.

> Whatever you think of people (over)using 'advice, the 'ad-start-advice and
> > 'ad-stop-advice were a part of the tutorial and documentation in 24.3.
>
> Which tutorial are you referring to?
>

advice.el (distributed with Emacs 24.3) lines 861-1694, beginning with:

;; @ Foo games: An advice tutorial
;; ===============================
;; The following tutorial was created in Emacs 18.59. Left-justified
;; s-expressions are input forms followed by one or more result forms.
;; First we have to start the advice magic:
;;
;; (ad-start-advice)
;; nil


Though it's also in the info pages installed on my machine - I have no idea
where/when they're from.


TJ


-- 
Trey Jackson
bigfaceworm@gmail.com

"Like any truly useful program, `hello' contains a built-in mail reader."
-- GNU's Bulletin, July 1996

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Re: Emacs 24.4 and advice

[Stefan Monnier]

>> What do you use them for?
> It's left over code, I presume they were there because, upon first read of
> the documentation, it looked as though you needed to call (ad-start-advice)
> to get things going.

Right, and I think this documentation was a left from Emacs-18.

Calling ad-start-advice has been unnecessary since at least Emacs-19.28
(the first "official" Emacs-19 release), i.e. about 20 years now ;-)

If more people bump into it, we'll have to add an obsolete dummy
ad-start-advice for people who followed the tutorial.

>> Which tutorial are you referring to?
> ;; @ Foo games: An advice tutorial

Oh, indeed, the advice.el Commentary: includes a tutorial.  Sorry,
I didn't remember.


        Stefan

Re: Emacs 24.4 and advice

[Trey Jackson]

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Thanks!

I was just a bit surprised by no mention of it anywhere in the mailing list
or NEWS.  It's an easy fix and no big deal.  Next time I'll have to start
perusing the commit logs...

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 12:02 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:

> >> What do you use them for?
> > It's left over code, I presume they were there because, upon first read
> of
> > the documentation, it looked as though you needed to call
> (ad-start-advice)
> > to get things going.
>
> Right, and I think this documentation was a left from Emacs-18.
>
> Calling ad-start-advice has been unnecessary since at least Emacs-19.28
> (the first "official" Emacs-19 release), i.e. about 20 years now ;-)
>
> If more people bump into it, we'll have to add an obsolete dummy
> ad-start-advice for people who followed the tutorial.
>
> >> Which tutorial are you referring to?
> > ;; @ Foo games: An advice tutorial
>
> Oh, indeed, the advice.el Commentary: includes a tutorial.  Sorry,
> I didn't remember.
>
>
>         Stefan
>



-- 
Trey Jackson
bigfaceworm@gmail.com

"Like any truly useful program, `hello' contains a built-in mail reader."
-- GNU's Bulletin, July 1996

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