Re: Using custom as a type checker:- ramble

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "Stefan" == Stefan Monnier 
>>>>> <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:

  >> > I.e. I don't want to change the .emacs code at all, but I'd
  >> > like
  >> >to have a more-or-less generic way to add helpful analysis of
  >> >the code so as to give useful information to the user about
  >> >suspicious customizations.

  >> Well I would agree that this would be preferable.

  Stefan> It should be possible to get the desired result without
  Stefan> implementing an elisp interpreter in elisp, but instead by
  Stefan> temporarily rebinding `setq' as a macro (and things like
  Stefan> that).

I think that would be fairly hard! setq is such a basic function, and
to change it so that it worked correctly, but still failed at the
appropriate time. 

I presume you are still suggesting using the type information in
custom to make the determination as to whether an .emacs setq was
"type safe" or not? If this is the case, it would seem the two
approaches (a custom-setq, or augmented setq) would use a lot of
common code. 




  Stefan> Another alternative is to put the checking into the
  Stefan> byte-compiler (which already takes care of traversing elisp
  Stefan> code) and then byte-compile the .emacs file (not for speed
  Stefan> but for sanity checks).  This might be the best option.

That also sounds plausible, if somewhat beyond my elisp coding
skills. 


Cheers

Phil