Re: Readings for an emacs package maintainer ?

[Miles Bader]

Xavier MAILLARD <address@hidden> writes:
>> I want packages I am maintaining to be still supported for old
>> emacsen from, say, 19.x to latest possible (including xemacs).
>
> A totally fresh example hitted me earlier today: old-style backquotes.
> My package contains lots of them, I can easily rewrite them using the
> new style but I have to (I want to) be sure it could work with emacs <
> 19.29 (or so).

I hope 19.29 is just an arbitrarily-chosen example -- 19.29 was released
14 years ago!  Unless you really have users using older versions, there
seems little reason to go to great lengths to support them.

> (if (and (> emacs-major-version 19)
>        (> emacs-minor-version 29))
>    (defmacro my-modern-macro...)
>   (defmacro my-old-style-macro))
>
> Is that the best way ?

I think if you're going to keep the code containing old-style
backquotes, there's no point in duplicating it with new-style
backquotes.  The old-style code is ugly but it will still work in a
modern emacs.

-Miles

-- 
Cannon, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.