Re: new style Emacs compile

[Stefan Monnier]

>> > Backwards compatibility compilation-error-regexp-alist for compile.el is
>> > desirable, but I don't think it is essential.  Not that many users
>> > customize it.  It would not be a disaster if they had to make a change.
>> 
>> I agree that the case where the user has changed the value is rather
>> unimportant, but I know of several unbundled elisp packages which change it
>> to support a particular related tool.  My sml-mode is one such example which
>> will be fixed pretty promptly, but there are many more.
                                                ^^^^
Actually, it's probably not "many".

> My structure mostly adds variants, i.e. file, line and maybe column can
> also be lists rather than indexes.  The tail has changed.  Where the
> formats were before there are new elements, while the formats will go into
> the file-list (because they pertain to the file name).  This means that
> for all matchers not using the secret function-feature or formats the
> compatibility is given.

Good.

> This doesn't help.  If nobody can say what to look for, Emacs can't look
> for it.  I've asked on the TeX newsgroup and got one disheartening reply
> so far:

It's sadly a problem.  Don't try to solve it.

> clicking -3,11 would go to those lines in dir1/a while +4,10 would do the
> same for dir2/a -- and so forth however many difference groups there are.

My diff-mode.el does something similar.

> And a new command could be configured like the -p option to patch.
> I.e. it would know in which directory to find the file a corresponding to
> dir1/a.  Or more generally (also useful for remote-compile) there would be
> a translation function "when diff says dir1/a go to foo/bar".

Take a look at how my diff-mode.el does it: I always planned to adapt it
for use in compile.el but never got around to it.  It basically tries to
learn by example: if it can't find dir1/a, and the user says "it's in
foo/a.bar", when dir1/b is requested it will try foo/b.bar.


        Stefan