Re: Package initialization

[Artur Malabarba]

>>> Which seems to suggest that one should write some
>>> ;;;###autoload (progn ...)
>>> somewhere that does the initialization.  Is this the way it should be
>>> done?
>>
>> Yes, that line can be added to any of the package's “.el” files.
>
> The question was not if it works; the question was if this is considered
> good style.

As long as these autoload cookies are restricted to autoloading
commands and functions or running some very essential code (like
adding a theme to custom-theme-load-path, or adding a mode entry to
auto-mode-alist), then yes, it's good style.

> Frankly, I think this is very ugly because I can no longer
> load the foo-auotload.el file

Why would you load the file manually? It gets loaded for you.

Or are you complaining about the fact that it gets loaded
automatically? (you can disable that)

> without clobbering global variables.

Autoload cookies should not go around changing any global variable.
For instance, they should not change the fill-column or the
default-input-method. But it makes sense for them to change some
variables, like the auto-mode-alist or the custom-theme-load-path.