Subject: 30.2; EIEIO autoload does not add to class children

From: "B. Szilvasy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2025 23:15:04 +0100

EIEIO autoloads generated with an autoload cookie on a `defclass' do not
add the class to the superclasses' `eieio-class-children'. My use-case
is that I wanted to have a customize variable with an open set of
possible types the user could choose from, based on the EIEIO class
hierarchy.

The code to reproduce this follows:

;;; the-defclass.el --- Class definitions -*- lexical-binding: t -*-
(require 'eieio)

;;;###autoload
(defclass the-baseclass () ())
;;;###autoload
(defclass the-derivedclass (the-baseclass) ())

(provide 'the-defclass)
;;; the-defclass.el ends here

;;; the-repro.el --- Testing functions -*- lexical-binding: t -*-
(require 'eieio)

;;;###autoload
(defun the-check-children ()
   "Write the children of `the-baseclass'."
   (interactive)
   (message "%S" (eieio-class-children 'the-baseclass)))

(defconst the-directory (file-name-directory (or load-file-name 
(buffer-file-name))))

;;;###autoload
(defun the-loaddefs-generate ()
   "Generate loaddefs for this directory."
   (interactive)
   (let* ((autoload-file (expand-file-name "the-loaddefs.el" 
the-directory)))
     (loaddefs-generate
      the-directory autoload-file
      nil nil nil 'generate-full)))

(provide 'the-repro)
;;; the-repro.el ends here

On my machine, running the following commands from a directory
containing these two files produces these results:

$ emacs -Q --batch -L $PWD -l the-repro -f the-loaddefs-generate
   INFO Scraping 3 files for loaddefs...
   INFO Scraping 3 files for loaddefs...done
   GEN the-loaddefs.el
$ emacs -Q --batch -L $PWD -l the-loaddefs -f the-check-children \
    -l the-defclass -f the-check-children
nil
(the-derivedclass)

The generated loaddefs call `eieio-defclass-autoload' as expected, and
set the derived class' parents correctly (if the parents are loaded),
but do not add the derived class as the base classes' children at all.
 From my own bisect, this ostensibly used to work but was first broken
in, 24b7f77581c7eefe484db6cbbd661c04460c66aa "Stefan Monnier 2015-01-16
Improve handling of doc-strings and describe-function for cl-generic",
which changed `eieio-defclass-autoload' to ignore the superclasses
parameter, and then not later fixed in
bd017175d4571e24ef1fdf84676136af1d36002d "Stefan Monnier 2024-03-08
Simplify type hierarchy operations" which made `eieio-defclass-autoload'
set the derived class' parents again, but not the base class' children.
Notably the `eieio-defclass-autoload-map' variable which drove
some of this before is currently never written to.

I have half-written a patch to fix this, which I may send later on.

Best,
Beatrice

In GNU Emacs 30.2 (build 2, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.50,
cairo version 1.18.4)
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12401006
System Description: Manjaro Linux

Configured using:
'configure --with-x-toolkit=gtk3 --sysconfdir=/etc --prefix=/usr
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'LDFLAGS=-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--sort-common -Wl,--as-needed -Wl,-z,relro
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Important settings:
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Load-path shadows:
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