From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
To: "Paul W. Rankin" <pwr@bydasein.com>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: declare function/macro private
Date: Sun, 06 Jun 2021 22:54:41 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <jwvo8cipf74.fsf-monnier+emacs@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <7D467006-748F-4316-939E-C82D62D80221@bydasein.com> (Paul W. Rankin's message of "Mon, 7 Jun 2021 10:59:16 +1000")
>>> Of course there's already the convention of prefix--my-private-function, but
>> What would be the difference between this convention and your proposed declaration?
> Stefan, you must have missed my followup reply:
No, I'm still wondering what it is you find to be different.
My current guess is that you fear that "--" has currently been used
carelessly and imposing a more "structured" meaning to it after the fact
will hence introduce problems, whereas your declaration would come right
away with an associated "precise" meaning.
If so, I agree to some extent, but:
- As mentioned your declaration would suffer from the difficulty of
clarifying "internal to what" since sometimes a function is internal
to a file, sometimes to a multifile package and sometimes to a subset
of a file. Of course, that can be solved by adding an extra argument
to your annotation, but:
- your annotation is placed on those functions that are internal, which
(as a coder) are those functions which I'd rather not burden with too
much extra annotations, otherwise I'll just not bother declaring them
as internal (which is what we had before the "--" convention).
- As long as the effect is just a few font-lock-warning faces here and
there, I think the problem is harmless enough (and it does point to
real misfeatures in many cases, so it would help improve the code).
> I think requiring a program to explicitly declare something as internal will
> cause less trouble than adding a kind of compiler heuristic for "--" symbol
> names because there are likely plenty of those where people have used the
> name with the perspective that it's just a hint and doesn't actually do
> anything. e.g. `imenu--index-alist' is supposedly internal but any elisp
> program hooking into Imenu needs to use this variable.
Yes, currently it's a bit of a wild west because the "--" has no effect,
but maybe it's time to impose some order on this, indeed.
> Also I just dislike computer heuristics.
It's not a heuristic.
>>> my thinking here is that a program could declare a function/macro as
>>> private, then the compiler could signal a warning/error if that function
>>> appeared in a library outside the library it was defined and
>>> declared private.
>> We don't have a definition for "library", sadly.
> M-x find library says otherwise. But the definition of a "library" is
> inconsequential. Using "file" might be more helpful.
But "file" is the wrong granularity for many Gnus-internal definitions
(and same applies to all multifile packages). So what would use for
those if your declaration are only for file-local internal definitions?
Stefan
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-06-07 2:54 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-06-06 4:27 declare function/macro private Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.
2021-06-06 7:09 ` Omar Polo
2021-06-06 7:18 ` Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.
2021-06-06 9:53 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2021-06-06 12:43 ` Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.
2021-06-08 9:43 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2021-06-08 17:26 ` Robin Tarsiger
2021-06-06 18:05 ` Stefan Monnier
2021-06-06 18:12 ` Tassilo Horn
2021-06-06 20:12 ` Stefan Monnier
2021-06-07 0:51 ` Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.
2021-06-07 1:37 ` Arthur Miller
2021-06-07 1:43 ` Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.
2021-06-07 13:38 ` Arthur Miller
2021-06-07 0:59 ` Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.
2021-06-07 2:54 ` Stefan Monnier [this message]
2021-06-07 18:24 ` Arthur Miller
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2021-06-07 3:35 Boruch Baum
2021-06-07 4:49 ` Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.
2021-06-07 5:59 ` Stefan Monnier
2021-06-07 6:45 ` Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.
2021-06-07 12:39 ` Eli Zaretskii
2021-06-08 1:14 ` Boruch Baum
2021-06-08 4:20 ` Arthur Miller
2021-06-08 5:49 ` tomas
2021-06-08 15:46 ` Stefan Monnier
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