Subject: bug#59882: Multiple versions of Org in load-path problem

From: David Masterson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2022 13:56:03 -0800

Adding this to bug #59882

"Michel Schinz" <[email-masked]> writes:

> Just for the record, I also ran into problems when installing Org 9.6
> using Emacs' package system on top of an older version that came with
> Emacs. If I tried to install it as usual (M-x list-packages, then
> install the package from there), I had errors during compilation related
> to `org-assert-version`, and then if I restarted Emacs, I would get a
> fatal error in an unrelated package.
>
> I managed to solve that problem by:
> 1. uninstalling Org 9.6 and exiting Emacs,
> 2. starting Emacs with -q,
> 3. installing Org 9.6 from there (using M-x list-packages as usual),
> 4. restarting Emacs.

Interesting!  I tried this (essentially) and it worked for my case.  In
my case, I had a built-in Org-9.3 and I was trying to use list-packages
to install Org-9.6. I checked that using -q still added Org-9.3 to the
load-path, but, since Org wasn't loaded, the install via list-packages
worked.

The question is what's the proper way of doing this without '-q'?

> I'm not sure this is related to your problem, or whether that helps (but
> I hope it does)...

I think it does.

Side note:

In my testing, I found a strange case where, in *scratch*, I get:

(message "%s" org-version)
;; Error undefined
;; Do 'C-h v org-version'
(message "%s" org-version)
9.3

So, 'describe-variable' on org-version causes Org to be loaded?!?  Why
do I have a feeling this is related to this bug?

-- 
David Masterson