Subject: bug#13583: 24.3.50; Error when activating auto-revert-mode

From: Michael Heerdegen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:44:50 +0100

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

> You can run the :set form of the option, with suitable substitutions
> for "variable" and "value", instead of setting the value with setq.
> But then you'd need to change that every time the :set form changes in
> autorevert.el.

IMHO, no user should need to do something like that.

I have a question: If it may be necessary for users to run this code to
achieve what Dani wants (which is not exotic), why don't we just provide
a callable function that DTRT (and call it in the setter), instead of
forcing people to call this code indirectly via Custom?

The current situation is consistent and not a bug, yes - but it may also
be confusing to non-experts (i.e., the majority of Emacs users).

I often saw people being reluctant about using `custom-set-variables' in
their init file.

I browsed the doc of `custom-set-variables', as well as the
"Customization" chapter in the manual.  I found no places were we say
that some of these functions are suitable for being called from other
files than the custom file, without danger.  But if it is sometimes even
necessary to do so, even if the user doesn't use the Customize
interface, shouldn't we clearly explain this somewhere?

Regards,

Michael.