Re: auth-source.el and eieio

[Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc>]

On Mon, Feb 14 2011, Ted Zlatanov wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:20:53 -0800 Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote: 
>
> LI> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>>> OK, so we can't drop 23.1 and older.  Are we bundling EIEIO with Gnus or
>>> not?  If not, I'll fix auth-source.el to degrade semi-gracefully.
>
> LI> Would bundling EIEIO with Gnus have any other negative impact?  
> LI> That is, are there incompatibilities in EIEIO itself that may
> LI> freak out various XEmacs/Emacs instances that may (or may not)
> LI> have other versions of EIEIO installed?
>
> LI> If this can be done cleanly (i.e., a lib directory that dgnushack.el
> LI> figures out whether to add to the load path (or not)), then I think
> LI> including it would be the way to go.

It is likely to lead to load-path shadows with weird effects.
[ Just imagine compiling Gnus from git on a system with several Emacs
versions (e.g. Debian-based systems).  The user will probably compile
with the oldest Emacs and run the compiled version of Gnus with all
versions.  With the newer Emacs, Gnus' EIEIO files will probably
shadow the newer ones from Emacs. ]

> That would work for me, assuming there are no version issues.  But I
> don't know enough about EIEIO to say.  Reiner, WDYT?  Anyone else?

I don't object, but it may lead to trouble.

Would it be feasible to split auth-source.el into a basic version
(compatible with older Emacs version without EIEIO; with at least the
features we have in auth-source.el bundled with Emacs 23.3) and an
advanced version.  The advanced version would not be used with older
Emacsen.  Gnus should check at runtime what is available.  It is okay
if new features are not available with the basic version (like with
shr.el).

Bye, Reiner.
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