Re: alist-get in Emacs 24?

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-10-02, at 09:34, Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de> wrote:

> Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:
>
>> I will probably just write functions like set-alist-element and
>> inc-alist-element (or maybe I'll name them better) so that the library
>> works in Emacs 24, but is there a better way?
>
> There was assoc.el in prior Emacsen (and it's still lying around in
> lisp/obsolete).  `aput' is its setter for alists.  Works great, but is
> obsolete.

Thanks.

> A different approach is to use `assoc', `delq' and `push', i.e., do it
> by hand.

And this might be the way to go for me.

>> Also, what would be the recommended policy for supporting older Emacsen?
>> Is it enough to test my packages against 24.1 (which didn't compile on
>> my machine anyway, btw)?  Should I care for Emacs 23 at all?
>
> That's your choice.  There are lots of third party packages that only
> support the current minor release and maybe some before that.  Others
> support much older releases.

Of course.  What I was asking was more or less "what is the percentage
of Emacs users who are on 23, 24... etc.".  Are there any estimates?

Also, are there any good practices/guidelines as to how to indicate in
the code that some of its parts are meant for legacy Emacsen?  So that
I can e.g. remove them 3 years from now without having to study all the
code, for example.

> Support of old releases is nice for people that have to use the Emacs
> version they find at their computer at work.  In your case, if you don't
> even know those older releases much, I would not care too much about it.

I know quite a lot about those releases - I started with Emacs v19 or
so.  It's that I know about them only from the user perspective;
I started serious Elisp hacking about v23.

Also, assuming everyone else also is on the bleeding edge and compiles
from source is not a brilliant idea, I admit.

> Michael.

Thanks again,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University