Re: Strange eval-after-load

[David Kastrup]

Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> writes:

> Morning, Richard!
>
> On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 07:21:15PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
>>     I think people will either just quietly commit
>>     eval-after-loads, or they'll write clumsy abstruse workarounds.
>  
>> If people try to sneak them in, I will do something about them.
>
> :-)
>  
>> The "clumsy workarounds" might actually be superior, for maintenance
>> purposes.  That's the reason for this policy: so people will take the
>> trouble to use those "clumsy" workarounds, instead of taking the
>> inferior lazy way out.
>
> Richard, please tell me what's wrong with using eval-after-load.
>
> I've been trying to get an answer to this question in post after
> post after post, and all replies have been evasive.  Everybody else
> has been writing as though it were perfectly obvious and
> uncontrovertible that eval-after-load is bad.  It's anything but
> obvious to me.

Like defadvice, it is hooking into parts of a package that are lacking
a proper interface.  It is not guaranteed to continue to work, its
effects are not certain when you are loading a package more than once,
it makes debugging a pain.  If there is a missing interface, the
proper solution is to create it, not fudge something onto a package
that might stop working at some time.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum