Re: auth-source.el and eieio

[David Engster <deng@randomsample.de>]

Ted Zlatanov writes:
> On Mon, 14 Feb 2011 22:26:38 +0100 David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> wrote: 
>
> DE> Lars Ingebrigtsen writes:
>
>>> While it would mean less work not to support older Emacs versions, I
>>> think it would be nice to do so, if it's possible.  
>
> DE> I agree it would be nice if Gnus would at least compile on older
> DE> Emacsen, but I think it's acceptable that some features don't work or
> DE> need additional packages. I think we have this situation already for
> DE> stuff needing EPG/EPA, for instance?
>
> There's no simple way to degrade auth-source.el if EIEIO is not present,
> unfortunately.  I can special-case strings to mean authinfo files as a
> backend designator for all hosts and logins and defalias `oref' and
> `defclass' to 'ignore if EIEIO is not available.  It will be ugly.

I didn't really follow the auth-source development, so I don't know the
details. I was hoping that one could fallback to the old .authinfo-stuff
in an easier manner in case EIEIO isn't available.

> I was hoping to start using EIEIO in other packages, though, hence this
> whole discussion.  If we must support Emacs 23.1 then I can't do that.

Yes, I agree. IMO supporting two Emacs minor versions should be enough
(namely 23.2 and 23.3). Users of older Emacsen can still use older Gnus
versions without problems.

-David