Subject: bug#31150: Entries in load-path should not have trailing slashes

From: David Kastrup <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2018 19:34:49 +0200

Radon Rosborough <[email-masked]> writes:

>> I see in the sources of this package the following address to submit
>> bug reports
>
> I did several Google searches along the lines of "auctex bug tracker",
> and did not find this command. Perhaps some SEO would be in order.

For crying out loud, one does not have to look in the "sources of this"
package or use "Google" searches.  The package has documentation.  The
documentation is available in the usual places (Info) and also in the
menus of the package (like in the LaTeX menu).

The menus of the package also contain an entry for submitting bug
reports.

Perhaps some minimal trust in the package authors would be in order.

> Thanks, I might consider this. (straight.el supports Windows, so I
> would need to generalize your patch to use the OS-independent path
> manipulation functions.) For now, however, I think I'll leave things
> be, since out of the ~114 packages I use, only AUCTeX and Geiser had
> this problem (and it should really be fixed upstream).

How about reading the documentation of load-path?

    load-path is a variable defined in ‘C source code’.
    Its value is

    [...]

    Initialized during startup as described in Info node ‘(elisp)Library Search’.
    Use ‘directory-file-name’ when adding items to this path.  However, Lisp
    programs that process this list should tolerate directories both with
    and without trailing slashes.

I repeat:

However, Lisp programs that process this list should tolerate
directories both with and without trailing slashes.

And there is good reason for that: XEmacs used to do things differently
(and wasn't tolerant about it as opposed to Emacs if I remember
correctly) and thus many packages used that behavior.  XEmacs may be
mostly history, but many packages are historic as well.  It's good to
remind AUCTeX that it can adapt to standard behavior now, but as a
package manager, your code _certainly_ should adhere to the instructions
in load-path documentation.

-- 
David Kastrup