Re: Yikes! easy-menu-add is suddenly compiled to `ignore', without any warning.

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Stefan.

First of all, sorry for being so strident in my opening post.  I now
understand what's happening.

On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 05:06:04 -0500, Stefan Kangas wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> > In Emacs 28, easy-menu-add is now compiled to `ignore'.  This isn't
> > friendly, particularly as in Emacs 27.2 and earlier, it just worked,
> > without any warnings of impending obsoletion.

> What does "working" mean here?

No "threatening" warning message.  The message I got from that warning
message was that it would be necessary to replace easy-menu-add by some
other working code, which the message didn't specify.

> In Emacs 27.1, I have here:

>     easy-menu-add is an alias for ‘ignore’ in ‘easymenu.el’.

> > Why have we not followed the normal procedure here, by marking the
> > function as obsolete, yet leaving it working, for one or two major
> > versions, and only then removing it?

> It is my understanding that this has followed the normal procedure for
> obsoletion.

OK, I got confused.  I might not be the only one.

> > This sudden removal of easy-menu-add will cause unnecessary annoyance
> > amongst maintainers whose sources still use it.  Even in the Emacs
> > sources there are 25 uses of the function.

I think I might be right about that point.

> This function is only relevant in XEmacs, so if this is important to you
> I recommend changing any such call to say:

>   (when (featurep 'xemacs)
>     (easy-menu-add foo-menu))

> The Emacs sources should already be updated accordingly.

Yes.  I'd missed out the -B1 flag in my grep call.  :-(

> > The warning message Emacs 28.1 gives out is particularly unfriendly and
> > unhelpful.  It looks like this:

> >     cc-mode.el:2591:4: Warning: `easy-menu-add' is an obsolete function
> >     (as of 28.1); use `ignore' instead.

> Yes, we could improve that message.

> Perhaps it could say:  "it is not needed, so just remove it".

Maybe it could say something like "which was always a no-op in Emacs",
thus reassuring maintainers that they needn't worry about lost menu
functionality.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).