Re: .emacs-settings.el

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:06:14 -0400 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote: 

Stefan> I don't think it's a necessary feature, but it would be a nice
Stefan> addition (for for file-local and dir-local settings).  I'm not
Stefan> sure how to implement it either, but I guess we could change
Stefan> hack-local-variables to maintain a new (buffer-local) variable
Stefan> `file-local-settings' and in C-h v we check this var to see if
Stefan> the variable displayed is among the ones that were set
Stefan> file-locally.

>> I was thinking about this, and it occurred to me that we could have
>> "false positives".  E.g., project.el might set the variable and add it

SM> Of course.  The obvious solution is to record to value set, so if the value
SM> is still the same, you can reasonably presume that there's still
SM> a relationship between the setting and the variable's current value.

SM> Of course, maybe there isn't, but most likely if the setting is a problem,
SM> the user will see "this setting comes from ...", it will go there, remove
SM> the file-local or project-local setting and try again and will then see that
SM> the same problem is still present but without the "this setting comes from
SM> ..." at which it'll know that there's something more to it.

What about recording a stack of modifications, e.g.

this variable was created in x.el line 300
it was modified by Customize in y.el line 400
it was overridden by a buffer-local version in z.el line 500
(file and line are not always available)

I don't know how hard it is to implement this, but it would be great for
general debugging too.  If the new value of the variable could be
recorded as well (optionally), this would be even more useful.

Ted