Re: How to fix Emacs24 compiler warning w/o breaking code for previous versions

[Stefan Monnier]

> I've been working to address the elisp byte-compiler warnings thrown
> while compiling the current Org-mode head, and I do not know how to
> address cases where the byte-compiler insists on usage of a new feature
> not present in older Emacsen without breaking Org-mode support of those
> Emacsen.  I'm writing to ask for the "best practices" approach?

IMNSHO:
- The simplest solution is to only support a single or a very limited
  number of Emacs versions.
- Another good one is to support many versions, only pay attention to
  warnings in the most recent supported version, and accept some warnings
  as "better have the warnings than break backward compatibility".
- The next best one is to do as above except that you additionally wrap
  the remaining warnings in `with-no-warnings' (and regularly remove
  those `with-no-warnings' to remind you of the problems you can't fix
  yet because of backward compatibility).
I strongly recommend against aiming to silence warnings on all the
supported Emacs versions.  It's a waste of time and leads to poor code
(e.g. ugly/brittle byte-compiler hacks, cc-bytecomp comes to mind, I'd
better stop here or I'll have nightmares again).


        Stefan