Is (provide 'foo) at the start good or bad?

[William Xu]

Hi, 

I got a problem while configuring ffap.  I have this in my .emacs: 

 (eval-after-load 'ffap
   '(progn
      (setq ffap-c-path (cons "../inc" ffap-c-path))))

And when I M-x ffap, it will complain that ffap-c-path is not 
defined.  I figured it out it is due to (provide 'ffap) at the 
very start of ffap.el.  The easist solution is changing it to: 

 (eval-after-load "ffap"
   ...  
 
Then it will depend on loading of the file, not just the feature. 
But I always like to depend on the feature(at least typing one 
less char).  So what is the benefit of providing it at the very 
start? 

--
William

http://xwl.appspot.com