Re: Using custom as a type checker:- ramble

[Phillip Lord <p.lord@russet.org.uk>]

>>>>> "Stefan" == Stefan Monnier <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:

>>>>> "Phillip" == Phillip Lord <p.lord@russet.org.uk> writes:
  >> Now what I would want to do is combine the two. So have something
  >> like (custom-setq compilation-window-height) Where custom-setq
  >> would use the custom mechanism to set a variable. If it was of
  >> the wrong type (so would display "mismatch" in the dialog), then
  >> at this point an error would be signalled. This way I would have
  >> most of the advantages of both systems. I could do conditional
  >> logic, I could comment, I could grep, and so on. But I would also
  >> get good "type safety."

  Stefan> What I would much rather have is a way to load a normal
  Stefan> .emacs and automatically have all the `setq's checked as
  Stefan> above.  The checking could also include obsolescence and
  Stefan> things like that.

  Stefan> I.e. I don't want to change the .emacs code at all, but I'd
  Stefan> like to have a more-or-less generic way to add helpful
  Stefan> analysis of the code so as to give useful information to the
  Stefan> user about suspicious customizations.

Well I would agree that this would be preferable. 

What worries me, though, is the complexity of this task. I don't know
about you, but my .emacs (and other files that I call from .emacs) is
huge, and often complex, so interpreting this would be complex. Adding
a "custom-setq" function would potentially be very simple. 

Although I guess you would also need "custom-add-to-list". And then
"custom-add-hook". And so on. By which time I gets a lot less simple,
and would also require a lot of recoding of existing .emacs'.

Hmmm.

Phil