Re: Useful package? Compat.el

[Timothy <tecosaur@gmail.com>]

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Hi Russel,

> Do you have any examples of where this could shorten code in Org?

I don’t have any examples on hand, but Org is already rolling some compat code
for old Emacs versions, and we’ve had issues where people have accidentally used
functions which are “too new” (but a few years old, and so nobody picked it up
till someone raised an issue). I can also personally recall times when I’ve had
to refactor code to make it uglier and more verbose to avoid using newer
functions. All of this is why I’m thinking this could be an interesting idea.

> I believe it’s a tall order to add a dependency, but if it eliminates
> large chunks of backward compatibility code then maybe that’s
> something to consider.

I think the way to do this would be as a “soft” dependency, i.e. not needed for
anyone running a recent version of Emacs, but needed if you want to use Org with
an old version of Emacs. Not sure how this would best be done, but if this were
to be useful, this is how I’d imagine it working.

All the best,
Timothy