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Re: Handling deprecated features
From: |
Neil Jerram |
Subject: |
Re: Handling deprecated features |
Date: |
02 May 2001 22:24:02 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 |
>>>>> "Marius" == Marius Vollmer <address@hidden> writes:
Marius> Neil Jerram <address@hidden> writes:
>> 1) I'm not sure about using an environment variable to
>> customize the behaviour. Currently, we already have two
>> mechanisms for this kind of control: (i) command line options
>> and (ii) the (xxx-options) interfaces. Why should we add a
>> third form of customization rather than use one of the existing
>> mechanisms?
Marius> Good point. I thought of an environment variable first
Marius> because I think they are the easiest for people to control
Marius> when they are using some application program that hides
Marius> Guile in its innards. Not all Guile using applications
Marius> might accept the standard command line arguments, or read
Marius> "~/.guile". Changing the code to insert an appropriate
Marius> `(xxx-options)' call is likely not feasible either.
Marius> Thus, I think a environment variable is good for people
Marius> who just want Guile to shut up. [...]
OK, I think this is a good argument. But in this case, please can we
have a consistent relationship between environment variables and the
(xxx-options) interfaces? For example, one possibility would be for
all the options interfaces to initialize themselves at init time
according to the values of corresponding environment variables:
(let ((val (getenv "GUILE_XXX_OPTIONS")))
(if val
(xxx-options-interface val)))
(It would be better for GUILE_XXX_OPTIONS to be able to specify a
delta to the compile time defaults for xxx-options, but I haven't
thought about a syntax for that yet. The thing that I really *don't*
want to see is a proliferation of different and unrelated means of
configuration.)
>> ;;; `xxx' is deprecated and will disappear in a future version
>> of ;;; Guile; please use `yyy' instead.
>>
>> and
>>
>> ;;; `xxx' will be removed in the next Guile release; please use
>> ;;; `yyy' instead.
>>
>> I wonder if anyone else thinks this last distinction would be
>> useful?
Marius> I don't know. I would rather not worry about this too
Marius> much. I think I'll first implement the basic stuff
Marius> outlines so far, and we can then see how to improve it
Marius> later.
OK - agreed.
Neil