Re: add-hook sets hook globally if buffer-local hook is nil

[Alan Shutko]

Lute Kamstra <address@hidden> writes:

> This new behavior is intended; it is documented in the docstring of
> add-hook and in the section on hooks in the Lisp Reference manual.

Gack, that's even worse.

This causes serious breakage, because software puts stuff on
local-write-file-hooks expecting it to be _local_, as promised by
_its_ docstring.

For instance, bbdb puts a function on there to add a coding system
cookie to the bbdb file.  With this change, the
"local-write-file-hooks" puts the coding system cookie to all files.

> The change is mentioned in the NEWS file.  Note furthermore that
> local-write-file-hooks is obsolete.

It may be obsolete, but it's not gone.  We have to work with existing
programs.  I don't think reversing the meaning of default add-hook
behavior is the way to do that.

Furthermore, the NEWS entry is incorrect:

** A non-nil value for the LOCAL arg of add-hook makes the hook
buffer-local even if `make-local-hook' hasn't been called, which might
make a difference to some code.

That makes sense.  It doesn't say anything about "If you don't set
the optional local parameter, we will _ignore_ the buffer local state
of the variable."

-- 
Alan Shutko <address@hidden> - I am the rocks.
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C++ Programmers have private parts.