Subject: Re: bug#66742: 30.0.50; transient-mark-mode is not enabled after re-dumping Emacs

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 16:31:06 +0300

> From: Ihor Radchenko <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 13:25:50 +0000
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> > This is not relevant, since packages that aren't preloaded will be
> > loaded at run time, and therefore the values will be evaluated in the
> > correct context.  If you are talking about these, then I don't
> > understand what prompted you to raise this issue to begin with, and in
> > a thread that discusses dumping.
> 
> ... but ideally, I wish that we would not have to patch the existing
> libraries in order to preload them.

You don't need to patch any libraries, you need to arrange for the
defcustom's to be re-evaluated at startup time.

But if we want to be able to re-dump any library, and let it run on a
different system after that, we should indeed stay away of
non-constant default values of user options as much as we can.
However, getting there will not be easy and will take a long time, if
ever.