Re: .dir-locals.el vs. guix-devel-mode

[taylanbayirli@gmail.com (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)]

Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> writes:

> Taylan Ulrich "Bayırlı/Kammer" (2015-09-28 23:05 +0300) wrote:
>
>> Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> More generally, I'm strongly against using "eval" in .dir-locals.  IMO
>>> this file should be used only to set local variables, and ideally it
>>> shouldn't evaluate an arbitrary code.
>>
>> Just to clarify: I suppose you mean using eval for things other than
>> which Emacs can automatically determine to be safe.  E.g.
>>
>>     (eval . (put 'foo 'scheme-indent-function <n>))
>>
>> for integer <n> is safe; Emacs will eval that silently if I'm not
>> mistaken.
>
> Actually I don't like .dir-locals.el in general.  I consider it a
> workaround for the case when there are no appropriate major/minor modes
> for editing the project files.

I agree a full guix-devel minor mode might be a good idea, but a
passerby contributor or newcomer shouldn't need to know about it IMO.
It will seem like an additional hurdle to them.  If the newcomer sticks
around, they'll find out and use the mode eventually, but first
impressions matter a lot.

For that reason I'd use .dir-locals.el to its limits, i.e. so long as
the user isn't bothered with the unsafe warning.  (So that would
actually mean using it less than how much we use it right now...)

Taylan