Re: Release of CC Mode 5.31

[Alan Mackenzie]

On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, Richard M. Stallman wrote:

>    After I saw the problem, but before I reported it, I recompiled all
>    the cc-*.el files, by "make recompile".  Perhaps that command does not
>    compile the files in the order you mention.  It would be nice if it
>    did that automatically.

>There is no Emacs feature to control order of compilation,
>so there would be no easy way to make that automatic.

>However, I wonder about this:

>    > After downloading the new cc-langs.el, you need to byte-compile first
>    > cc-langs.el (which builds the macro c-init-language-vars), then
>    > cc-mode.el (which expands this macro (in the defun
>    > c-init-language-vars-for)).

>Why is it crucial to compile cc-langs.el before compiling cc-mode.el?

To be honest, I'm not sure any more whether this is accurate.  cc-mode
uses a macro (c-init-language-vars) in cc-langs which generates a massive
setq form for all the language dependant variables.  This macro is
expanded 7 times, once for each constituent language.

So, if cc-mode picks up an (old) cc-langs.elc in preference to a (newer)
cc-langs.el, things will fail.

>Once you have deleted cc-langs.elc, compilation of cc-mode.el will use
>the source file, cc-langs.el.  Does compilation of cc-mode.el fail to
>work properly with the interpreted cc-langs.el?

It should work fine with the interpreted cc-langs.el, as long as it
doesn't load the (older) cc-langs.elc instead.  Deleting an outdated
cc-langs.elc should definitely make it work.

-- 
Alan.