bug#36903: 27.0.50; gnus registry vs. debbugs

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> The conclusion is I don't know what to do. Users who have customized
>> `gnus-summary-line-format' to draw info from the registry will see an
>> error if they start Gnus, stop Gnus, then start debbugs-gnu. That's
>> because stopping Gnus clears the registry, but starting debbugs-gnu
>> doesn't re-load it (because it doesn't load the users gnus.el file), and
>> the summary line format continues trying to access the registry object.
>
> Can't you just make the erroring-out functions return "" or something if
> they're called before the registry is loaded?  Or make them initialise
> the registry if called when it's not loaded?

I can do that for in-tree code, and my own packages, but who knows what
else is out there that might try something similar.

But it's probably a better solution than anything else I can think of.
I'd be inclined to just have them return an empty string. Another
possibility would be to have the formatting code wrap the user-function
funcall in `ignore-errors' and return an empty string there.

Eric