Re: Is (provide 'foo) at the start good or bad?

[Davis Herring]

>  > If you have two files which require each other, why do they each have a
>  > feature symbol?
>
> Because external packages don't know about the mutual dependency, and
> shouldn't have to.  Multiple versions of the files may support the
> same interfaces, some with and some without mutual dependency.  Etc.

That was case #3, wasn't it?  Once you have such a dependency, you might
as well (internally, for development) treat the two files as one package. 
I didn't mean to imply that you never needed two symbols -- that's why I
gave solutions, for each case that I could think of, that didn't involve
putting `provide' at the top.

>  > Put differently, `provide' is supposed to "Announce that FEATURE is a
>  > feature of the current Emacs.".  If you put it at the beginning of a
>  > package, you're lying (until the end of it).
>
> Sure.  There are other standard techniques that involve such "lying",
> like `(defvar foo)', which does exactly the same kind of thing that a
> provide at the top does.  In both cases, there may be a path through
> the code leaves something uninitialized.

But the only thing which can even tell that (defvar foo) was present is
the byte-compiler; we know all about how to lie to it safely.  `provide'
has a globally-visible effect (that's its whole purpose!), so arbitrary
code may react badly if we lie when we use it.

Davis

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