[ESS] FW: Help in compiling ESS

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Sparapani, Rodney <rsparapa using mcw.edu>
>>>>>     on Wed, 15 Feb 2017 16:59:44 +0000 writes:

    > Hi Paola:

    > That is correct.  You can’t get around a missing feature
    > by just not compiling ;o) 
    
yes, indeed.  {and the other advice, "do not compile it", is
actually not such a good advice: If you can't compile it, you
have a partially broken ESS}.

    > On the other hand, this is clearly a bug on ESS’ part
    > since we should not assume that this feature exists.  
    > I believe defvaralias is available in Emacs 24.4 and higher
    > so if you try 24.5 it should work.

As a matter of fact,  defvaralias   has been available for much
longer. It is already in  emacs 22.3 (which is too old to be
supported by ESS).

I.e. there is no bug in ESS for this;  rather Paolo must have
accidentally used a much older version of emacs when compiling /
trying to use ESS interactively.
AFAICS, e.g. emacs 21.x  is even too old for  defvaralias  to
exist.

Martin