Re: Compile issues

[Dave Love]

address@hidden (Daniel Pfeiffer) writes:

>> I'm surprised it was installed if the normal user interface doesn't
>> work.
>
> "Doesn't work" is an exaggeration.

??  You may disagree that C-x ` is the normal interface implied by the
manual, but it clearly doesn't work.  I'm worried if it's non-trivial
to make it work.

> A message labeled "info" is a clear statement that this is not
> something to worry about.

Maybe, but it doesn't mean I should ignore it if I want to make Emacs
work.

> It's in NEWS now.  Btw. Emacs can customize groups, and then you can
> comfortably browse all the options.

I tried the Custom version information, which indicated no new options
since Emacs 20, and apropos showed up nothing I searched for.

>> Yes, but.  Several different packages in Emacs did that.  It appeared
>> to be sanctioned for that reason.  If it was wrong, one would expect
>> the first Emacs package that needed to do it to fix the issue.
>
> Some of them I can't test or do not even understand.  Their authors
> and maintainers have repeatedly been asked to cooperate, but did not
> respond.  So we decided to install this, so that someone who finds
> something broken, can at least explain that.

I was just trying to explain why telling people they were asking for
trouble isn't very helpful.  For instance, I'm not exactly a beginner
and I recently contributed a Python mode which used
`compile-internal'.  No-one asked me about that, although I understood
it was to be installed, but hasn't been.  Has the maintainer been
asked about the Erlang mode I'm trying to fix at present?  Obviously I
understand the difficulty of knowing what you might break if you
_have_ to make an incompatible change for some reason, and I'm trying
to help, though that doesn't seem to be a very productive activity
these days.