Re: PGG incompatibility issue of SEMI (was Re: Somebody needs to (require 'pgg))

[Kazuhiro Ito <kzhr@d1.dion.ne.jp>]

Hi,

> > SEMI's pgg-def.el (semi-1_14 and semi-1_14-wl branch) has the
> > definition of `pgg-decrypt-automatically' variable.  It is SEMI
> > specific.  But PGG is independent library and contained by other
> > packages and Emacs itself.  If other pgg-def.el is loaded instead of
> > SEMI's one, it causes a problem (*1).
> >
> > (*1) http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.mail.wanderlust.general.japanese/8651
(snip)
> > Please see the attached patch.  I think it would be better that the
> > name of the variable is changed.  But this requires to change of
> > Wanderlust, therefore I keep the patch to contain only minimum change.
> 
> The patch is okay.
> 
> Renaming the variable would be better, indee. Ideally we could rename
> it, use the renamed version in mime-pgp.el and declare the new name a
> variable alias for pgg-decrypt-automatically (i.e. defvaralias).
> 
> Problem with this solution: It would break backward compatibility with
> Emacs < 22 because Emacs 21 does not have a defvaralias function built
> in.

I think the existence of defvaralias() should not be the point to make
a decision about supporting platforms.  Because I think we don't have
to respect compatibility with unreleased version (even though it is
not released in many years), renaming and recording into ChangeLog are
enough.

If we keep backward compatibility about pgg-decrypt-automatically, I
think pgg-decrypt-automatically doesn't have to be renamed.  Because
the violation of namespace has no real harm (due to almost no
posibilities of PGG getting new features).

-- 
Kazuhiro Ito