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

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2021 14:47:57 +0200

Gregory Heytings <[email-masked]> writes:

> Oh, I see.  You mean that setq'ing autoloaded variables, which are
> loaded before their .el files is loaded, can usually be setq'd,
> disregarding their :set property.

No, I'm saying that (for most variables) Emacs doesn't know that there's
a :set on the variable when loading .emacs.  And that's fine.

Also for variables where Emacs knows there a :set (which would then
issue the warning), it's also fine, because loading the .el file works
perfectly.  Most of the :set thingies are for when you've already
started the mode/package and then change things "in flight".

> But I don't see how one could distinguish between those for which it
> is problematic and those for which is isn't.  ISTM that in this case
> displaying a warning even when it's not really problematic is better
> than not displaying warnings for those variable for which it is
> problematic?

No, displaying a useless warning (and it will be useless in the vast
majority of the cases) isn't good.

I haven't really been paying attention to this bug report after closing
it -- we're not going to change the manual as requested, and it's fine
to use setq in .emacs.  If we're to do something about this, then
somebody would have to go through all the defcustoms with :set and try
to identify some that should, indeed, not be set with setq and tag them
up.  (There aren't a lot of these.)

Which is why I closed this bug report in the first place.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no