GNU bug report logs - #62734
Always fully rebuild autoloads in package-generate-autoloads

Previous Next

Full log

Message #38 received at 62734 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Philip Kaludercic <philipk <at> posteo.net>
Cc: 62734 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, leo.gaskin <at> le0.gs
Subject: Re: bug#62734: Always fully rebuild autoloads in
 package-generate-autoloads
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2023 13:32:11 +0300

> From: Philip Kaludercic <philipk <at> posteo.net>
> Cc: leo.gaskin <at> le0.gs,  62734 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2023 08:19:35 +0000
> 
> >>   Rebuilding an installation means scraping for new autoload
> >>   cookies, re-compiling Emacs Lisp files, building and installing
> >>   any documentation, downloading any missing dependencies.
> >
> > Thanks.  As a tangent: this is confusing terminology, so it is
> > unfortunate that it was selected for this operation.
> 
> Is there a different way you would have put this?  What we do here is
> sort of combining the steps that the ELPA server and a local
> package-install do into one, and in my mind this constitutes building
> software.

Compilation?  Setup?

"Building" is a strange term when we are talking about a Lisp package.

> > I don't follow: a file that didn't change doesn't need its autoloads
> > updated, right?
> 
> Right, but if we want to add some additional code to the autoloads (as
> we are with package.el, when injecting load-path modification), then
> loaddefs-generate does not re-use the old data, and instead just throws
> it away and creates a new file with contents of EXTRA-DATA, but without
> any autoload information.

That is definitely a bug.  But a package without autoloads is still a
valid use case, and we should support it.

> I think the central issue here is the
> 
>   (and (not defs) extra-data)
> 
> check.  Just because we did not find any new definitions to autoload
> /and/ EXTRA-DATA is non-nil, does not mean the old contents should be
> discarded.  The else-case already does the right thing, so I really do
> think that getting rid of the `if' could resolve the issue:

What happens if a package has no autoloads?  The doc string says in
that case passing EXTRA-DATA will produce OUTPUT-FILE regardless.
Does your patch handle that?  (It's hard to tell, given all the
whitespace changes in the patch.)

Previous Next

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