Re: [Emacs-diffs] master db828f6: Don't rely on defaults in decoding UTF-8 encoded Lisp files

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden>
> Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2015 15:57:48 -0400
> 
> >     Don't rely on defaults in decoding UTF-8 encoded Lisp files
> 
> FWIW, I've removed the "coding: utf-8" thingy on a bunch of files in the
> last year.
> 
> Why not?

Because I'm tired of hunting problems with raw bytes being displayed,
just to learn yet another deficiency in our guesswork.

> Since Emacs-24.4 the coding-system Emacs uses for .el files is
> `prefer-utf-8', i.e. it is explicitly defined to be "utf-8 if it is
> valid"

I don't think prefer-utf-8 does what you say here.  In any case, I've
seen the default decoding do incorrect things, and I see no reason to
risk that in files we control.