bug#19517: [SOLVED-sort of] recursive requires with recent auctex versions.

[Bernard Hurley]

Hi Mosè,

On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 03:37:18PM +0100, Mosè Giordano wrote:
> Hi Bernard,
> 
> 2015-01-05 18:28 GMT+01:00 Bernard Hurley <address@hidden>:
> > Hi All,
> >
> I cannot understand your problem.  Have you installed AUCTeX using
> ELPA

Indeed I have so there shouldn't be any problems and there are no problems with 
any of the other packages I have installed using ELPA.  However ELPA IS NOT 
INITIALISING AUCTeX CORRECTLY.

The result is that if I try using it normally (i.e. without my extra code - 
including loading "auctex" and "auctex-autoloads", which I agree should not be 
necessary), then I get "recursive require" errors whenever I try to use the 
package.

I can see that there must be something wrong with the way the package is being 
initialised by running emacs --debug-init with the "normal" set up.  It goes 
into the debugger when package-initialize gets called giving the stack trace I 
appended to the previous email.

The last few lines of the trace are:

=== snip ===
  package-activate(auctex)                                                      
                                                        
  package-initialize()                                                          
                                                        
  command-line()                                                                
                                                        
  normal-top-level()                                                            
                                                        
=== snip ===

from which it is clear the the debugger is being entered while AUCTeX is being 
initialised.

This could be a bug in ELPA but it seems unlikely as it doesn't affect any of 
the other packages I have installed, and I have a lot of them.

It could be that AUCTeX is never initialised properly but that this only 
becomes apparent when it is used in certain ways.  But I know for a fact that 
several other people have had exactly the same problem.  The only way I can get 
AUCTeX to work is:

        1. STOP ELPA initializing it.
        2. Wait for package-inialize to be called and load it myself.

The line:
        (setf package-load-list '((auctex nil) all))
achieves (1).

To achieve (2) is more difficult since it has to be done AFTER 
package-initialize has been called.  This is why the code to do it is in a 
function, auctex kludge, that is added to after-init-hook.

As to the code in "auctex-kludge" there are a couple of issues:

        3. Since AUCTeX has not been initialise it is not in the load-path.
        4. The code needs to be version independent.

The line:
          (let ((auctex-info  (assoc 'auctex package-alist)))
puts finds the information about the package in the ELPA repository into the 
local variable auctex-info so that auctex can be initialised in a version 
independent way, achieving 4.

Then I put the package in the load path with:
        (add-to-list 'load-path (aref (cadr auctex-info) 7))

Finally I initialise AUCTeX myself.

> and you have a line like
>   (load "auctex")
> in you init file?  If so, just remove that line, there is no need to
> manually load packages installed with the builtin package manager
> (unless you requested otherwise).

There SHOULD BE no need to load the package manually, but ELPA is not doing it 
properly and so I have no choice.

Regards,

Bernard.