Drop Emacs 24.3 support

rexim commented 8 years ago

It's almost 3 years old and even Debian stable thinks it's old. And because of Emacs 24.3 we have to keep these ugly things in our code base.

Maybe it's time to drop it?

@ForNeVeR, @Minoru, we already discussed that on the stream a bit. What do you guys think? I'm ok with dropping that ancient peace of crap.

Minoru commented 8 years ago

Isn't there an equivalent of #ifdef for Emacs Lisp that you can use to check for Emacs version and redefine < in case of 24.3 or below?

ForNeVeR commented 8 years ago

If Debian stable thinks it's old, I would think the same. So drop that, it does not exists for our purposes.

Modern emacs gaming requires the top hardware and software configurations. I don't think anyone could object that.

rexim commented 8 years ago

@Minoru,

First, Emacs Lisp is a dynamical language =) I can do that with regular if.

Second, you suggest to write

(if (version<= emacs-version "24.3")
    (and (<= terrified-timer
             pacmacs--ghost-blinking-threshold-ms)
         (<= pacmacs--ghost-blinking-threshold-ms
             (+ terrified-timer pacmacs-tick-duration-ms)))
  (<= terrified-timer
      pacmacs--ghost-blinking-threshold-ms
      (+ terrified-timer pacmacs-tick-duration-ms)))

instead of

(<= terrified-timer
    pacmacs--ghost-blinking-threshold-ms
    (+ terrified-timer pacmacs-tick-duration-ms))

right? :)

Anyway, I think it's time to drop it anyway. Thanks everyone!

rexim commented 8 years ago

@Minoru, hm.. I just thought that maybe you wanted to suggest to create some sort of crossversional variant of <=...

It's a good idea, but

This version of <= should have different name. I'm not sure if we can literally replace it in runtime. And not sure if it's even a good idea
Someone will definitely forget about this and will use regular <=.
<= is not the only thing that is fucked up in Emacs 24.3. All the comparators are. And some non-comparators too. And for each of them we have to create a crossversional variant.

That's why I'm absolutely for dropping 24.3 completely.

Minoru commented 8 years ago

Second, you suggest to write…

Yes. Furthermore, I believe one can write a function that, once called with the name of a strictly binary function (like < in 24.3) will bind to this name a lambda that will accept any number of arguments. You will then write one if block, somewhere in the main file, and all your functions will magically work properly for any Emacs version.

I'm not sure if we can literally replace it in runtime. And not sure if it's even a good idea

You can, but it's considered dangerous; see https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Defining-Functions.html

My stand on this issue is that you should only drop support for older versions if they hinder the development so much you have to backport whole new sets of features, e.g. implement PNG support or something. 20 or so lines it will probably take you to re-implement < and others the way you want them to behave is nothing, or so I believe.

But I'm not going to learn Emacs Lisp to do it myself, so you're free to ignore my ramblings.

rexim commented 8 years ago

Even magit doesn' support 24.3: https://github.com/magit/magit/blob/24b6fb7295c544c4cad6f64653f653c1e1c58406/lisp/magit.el#L19

codingteam / pacmacs.el

Drop Emacs 24.3 support #165