Re: cl-defgeneric vs random funcall in project.el

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 08/01/2015 05:20 PM, Stephen Leake wrote:

> > Not at all, they need variables. You can easily set the variables from
> > .dir-locals.el, and any Emacs-wielding team member on the same project
> > will use them automatically.
>
> Ok, I agree they could be variables.

Thinking about this more, buffer-local variables have their own 
complications:

- You need an buffer open, inside the given directory tree, to get their 
values. The project-find-functions API just passes in DIR to get a 
project instance. There might not even be a buffer open in that directory.

- If a user tries to set their values in init.el, that won't end well.

> The point is the name should be declared in project.el, so all backends
> use the same name.

You can't reuse the variables. There might be several project instances 
open at the same time.

The best bet seems to be to store them in the project file, which a 
project backend reads and saves to the project instance's slots.

Not sure what this means for the VC project backend. Git allows storing 
arbitrary key-value pairs in .git/config via 'git config', but that 
isn't true for every VCS. Bazaar doesn't, AFAICT.