Subject: bug#52290: 28.0.90; Undocumented generalized variables

From: Phil Sainty <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2021 15:09:09 +1300

On 2021-12-05 14:35, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> I don't think many of those are new -- they were just moved from
> cl-lib.el to gv.el, because it seemed weird to have them in cl-lib.el.

Aha. I'd seen that the cl docs had a bunch of extensions, but didn't
think to re-check those docs in 28.0.90.

> But we don't really have a deprecation mechanisme for generalised
> variables, so it's just hard.

I guess we'd want a new define-obsolete-* function, and for the setf
macro to be flagging uses of obsolete PLACE forms at compile time?

It looks to me as if `gv-get' might be the right place to be checking
this (but I'm only looking at the internals for the first time and
don't have a good handle on this stuff).

> The manual should absolutely not list most of these, because we don't
> want anybody to use them, and we want to remove many (most?) of the
> undocumented ones.
> 
> We just have to figure out how to do that in an orderly fashion.

Fair enough.  Should we start by deciding which ones we *should*
document, and at least get that much added for 28.1?

`buffer-local-value' is a clear "yes" vote from me (and I don't
currently have an opinion on anything else).

-Phil