Subject: Re: bug#15112: 24.3; package.el byte compile autoloads

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 15:15:46 +0200

Kevin Ryde <[email-masked]> writes:

> When package.el installs a file, the foo-autoloads.el which it creates
> is not byte compiled.  I hoped that it would be, because doing so allows
> the dynamic docstrings stuff to leave possibly big docstrings on disk
> until required.
>
> I see package-autoload-ensure-default-file contains
>
>     ";; no-byte-compile: t\n"
>
> which is perhaps copied from autoload-rubric.  Perhaps it could omit
> that to allow byte compile.
>
> I have presumed no-byte-compile in loaddefs is for the benefit of emacs'
> own loaddefs which are dumped.  Perhaps for everyone else the default
> rubric could allow byte compiling.

package-autoload-ensure-default-file now uses autoload-rubric internally
and no longer contains the line quoted above with "no-byte-compile".
However, autoload-rubric still contains it.

I guess the question is if it's there for good reason or could perhaps
be omitted.  If there's a good reason for it, perhaps this bug should be
closed as wontfix.

Noam, I noted that you added a comment to this particular line recently
in commit 1f7b602f84.  Could you perhaps shed some light on why we use
no-byte-compile here?

Thanks,
Stefan Kangas