GNU bug report logs - #14576
"make install" has trouble with non-standard locallisppath directories

Previous Next

Full log

Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Juanma Barranquero <lekktu <at> gmail.com>
To: Bug-Gnu-Emacs <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
Subject: "make install" has trouble with non-standard locallisppath directories
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2013 16:15:33 +0200

Package: emacs
Version: 24.3.50

On Windows, using the MSYS build machinery.

If you need to add a non-default lisp directory to the path, by
following nt/INSTALL.MSYS recommendation of doing, for example

  ./nt/msysconfig.sh
--enable-locallisppath='%emacs_dir%/../site-lisp;%emacs_dir%/share/emacs/24.3.50/site-lisp;%emacs_dir%/share/emacs/site-lisp'

then "make install" will try to create these directories *in the build
tree* (not the installation dir), and do a poor job at it. In the
above case, after make install the build tree will contain these
directories:

 %emacs_dir%
 site-lisp;%emacs_dir%/share/emacs/24.3.50/site-lisp;%emacs_dir%/share/emacs/site-lisp

"%emacs_dir%" is literal, an unexpanded environment variable.

Makefile.in contains this old note:

  ## I'm not sure creating locallisppath here serves any useful purpose.
  ## If it has the default value, then the later write_subdir commands
  ## will ensure all these components exist.
  ## This will only do something if locallisppath has a non-standard value.
  ## Is it really Emacs's job to create those directories?
  ## Should we also be ensuring they contain subdirs.el files?
  ## It would be easy to do, just use write_subdir.

and indeed, I would argue that is not Emacs' job to create them. If
the user is knowledgeable enough to have to use
--enable-locallisppath, s/he'll also know enough to make sure the
directories exist and contain subdirs.el as required.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.