Subject: 31.0.50; load-prefer-newer causes recursive load on Windows

From: Gary Oberbrunner <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 May 2025 18:04:22 -0400

Recent Emacs on Windows gets errors trying to recursively load during
startup. I'm using prebuilt msix installer from kiennq
(https://github.com/kiennq/emacs-build), and both the ucrt and regular
versions show this bug. I have not built Emacs myself on Windows in a
while, but the kiennq builds are usually solid.

Emacs -Q is OK, but this minimal setup shows the problem:

In $HOME/.config/emacs/init.el:

  (setq load-prefer-newer t)

Then start Emacs as usual. You will see startup taking a lot more time than
usual, and then in *Messages* you'll see many errors like this one:

Error muted by safe_call: (apply native--compile-async (
 "c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/emacs-lisp/cl-extra.el.gz"
  nil late))
  signaled (error "Recursive load"
  "c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz"
  "c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz"
  "c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz"
  "c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz"
  "c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz"
  "c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/emacs-lisp/ring.el.gz"
  "c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/comint.elc"
  "c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/progmodes/compile.elc")

As you can see, these errors are suppressed in this test case, but in a
real Emacs session,
later on the same errors prevent loading various files, so my init.el
never finishes loading. As an example of that, I get this error with my
actual emacs config:

error: Recursive load,
c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz,

c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz,

c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz,

c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz,

c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz,

c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/emacs-lisp/radix-tree.el.gz,

c:/Program
Files/WindowsApps/emacs-k_31.340.0.0_x64__tewns1xw2exn6/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/emacs-lisp/loaddefs-gen.elc,

c:/Users/garyo/.config/emacs/lisp/elpaca-bootstrap.el,
c:/Users/garyo/.config/emacs/init.el

In GNU Emacs 31.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-w64-mingw32) of 2025-05-01 built
 on fv-az1115-294
Repository revision: 3b18648e3daf021a37ca8aa71ee69fb3e8b79de9
Repository branch: HEAD
Windowing system distributor 'Microsoft Corp.', version 10.0.22635
System Description: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (v10.0.2009.22635.5025)

Configured using:
 'configure
 --prefix=/d/a/emacs-build/emacs-build/pkg/3b18648-ucrt-x86_64
 'CFLAGS=-O2 -fno-semantic-interposition -floop-parallelize-all
 -ftree-parallelize-loops=4 -g3 ' --disable-build-details --without-dbus
 --enable-link-time-optimization --enable-build-details
 --with-compress-install --with-small-ja-dic --with-gif --with-gnutls
 --with-harfbuzz --with-jpeg --with-json --with-lcms2 --with-mps
 --with-native-compilation --with-png --with-rsvg --with-tree-sitter
 --with-xml2 --with-xpm --with-zlib --without-cairo --without-tiff'

Configured features:
ACL GIF GMP GNUTLS HARFBUZZ JPEG LCMS2 LIBXML2 MODULES MPS NATIVE_COMP
NOTIFY W32NOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SOUND SQLITE3 THREADS
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS TREE_SITTER WEBP XPM ZLIB

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL:
  value of $LC_COLLATE: C
  value of $LANG: en_US.utf-8
  locale-coding-system: cp1252

Major mode: Elisp/l

Minor modes in effect:
  tooltip-mode: t
  global-eldoc-mode: t
  eldoc-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  electric-indent-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  minibuffer-regexp-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  indent-tabs-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t

Load-path shadows:
None found.

Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug lisp-mnt message mailcap yank-media puny
dired dired-loaddefs rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg
rfc6068 epg-config gnus-util mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse
rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045
ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils thingatpt time-date help-fns
byte-opt gv radix-tree pcase misearch multi-isearch vc-git diff-mode
track-changes easy-mmode files-x vc-dispatcher compile
text-property-search comint subr-x ansi-osc ansi-color ring cl-seq
comp-run bytecomp byte-compile comp-common rx cl-extra help-mode
warnings icons cl-loaddefs cl-lib rmc iso-transl tooltip cconv eldoc
paren electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type elisp-mode
mwheel touch-screen dos-w32 ls-lisp term/w32-nt disp-table term/w32-win
w32-win w32-vars term/common-win tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt
fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode lisp-mode prog-mode
register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch easymenu timer select
scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax font-core term/tty-colors
frame minibuffer nadvice seq simple cl-generic indonesian philippine
cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao
korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech
european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite emoji-zwj charscript
charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help abbrev obarray oclosure
cl-preloaded button loaddefs theme-loaddefs faces cus-face macroexp
files window text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env
code-pages mule custom widget keymap hashtable-print-readable backquote
threads w32notify w32 lcms2 multi-tty move-toolbar make-network-process
tty-child-frames native-compile mps emacs)

Memory information:
((conses 24 0 0) (symbols 56 0 0) (strings 40 0 0) (string-bytes 1 0)
 (vectors 24 0) (vector-slots 8 0 0) (floats 24 0 0)
 (intervals 64 0 0) (buffers 1000 0))

-- 
Gary