Subject: Re: bug#21695: 25.0.50; Change most occurrences of `setq' in Emacs manual to `customize-set-variable'? Really?

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2021 09:52:11 +0300

> From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2021 23:11:33 -0400
> 
>   > "Any source file" should include all the Lisp files installed on the
>   > user's machine, right?
> 
> I don't think so.  There is no need.
> 
> To make language clearer, let's say the variable is foofoo, its defcustom
> is in foofoo.el, and all its other uses in Emacs are in foofoo.el 
> after the defcustom.
> 
> That option doesn't have any problems, I think.

I don't see the significance of being defined and used in the same
file, for this matter.  A defcustom could need to use the :set
attribute for such variables, if just changing the value doesn't
produce the expected effect.  For example, some other foofoo.el
variables could depend on the value of foofoo, so any change in the
value of the latter needs to recalculate the values of its
dependencies.

Now suppose .emacs uses (setq foofoo ...), and foofoo.el is from some
third-party package, or even one of user's own init files.  How will
we be able to account for that by using a precompiled list of
variables produced from just the bundled Emacs Lisp files?