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

From: Radon Rosborough <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2018 14:41:52 -0700

> For crying out loud, one does not have to look in the "sources of
> this" package or use "Google" searches. The package has
> documentation.

Most people use search engines to find documentation these days.
That's not a value judgement; it's just a statement of fact.

> The documentation is available in the usual places (Info)

Info is not as standard as you make it out to be. I investigated the
486 packages that I have installed, and found that 297 of them have at
least minimal documentation hosted on GitHub in the form of a
README.md, while only 26 of them include any Info documentation.

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

That is true, but the vast majority of packages do not contain any
such menu entries. Furthermore, many users do not use the Emacs menus.

> However, Lisp programs that process this list should tolerate
> directories both with and without trailing slashes. [...] as a
> package manager, your code _certainly_ should adhere to the
> instructions in load-path documentation.

My package manager does not exactly fall under the rubric of "Lisp
programs that process this list". It does not do any processing,
really; it just adds an entry. If that is counted as processing, then
every time any Lisp program adds anything to `load-path', it should be
checking to make sure there is not a duplicate entry with a trailing
slash. Since nobody does that, I inferred that it doesn't make much
sense in this case either.

---

Looking at the summary page for the bug-auctex list, I see that it
does indeed mention M-x TeX-submit-bug-report, so it was a mistake for
me to say that it didn't. Sorry about that.

---

Best regards,
Radon Rosborough