Re: When should ralloc.c be used? (WAS: bug#24358)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> CC: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
> Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2016 16:40:14 -0400
> 
>   > Eli has mentioned a simpler approach, where we build an .elc file when 
>   > saving Emacs state and load the .elc file during normal startup. The 
>   > main worry about this approach is performance.
> 
> Any such scheme has this problem:
> how to find all the places where initialization has stored some sort
> of value?  They do not all have ways to access them and set them from Lisp.

The part that must be done in C, like DEFUN etc. will be done at
startup of the Emacs session.  The part that stores values in
variables exposed to Lisp will be either moved to startup.el, or done
at startup in C.  A few variables whose value depends on the build
directory and other stuff that is only known at build time will be
recorded in a special Lisp file created by the build and loaded at
startup as part of the .elc file described above.

Btw, Paul's description about "saving state" in a .elc file is
inaccurate: most of that file is just the preloaded Lisp packages,
like simple.el, subr.el, etc.  There's very little of saved state
there, because that state will simple be created at startup, each time
Emacs starts.

In source terms, most of the "if (!initialized)" parts will be run
each time Emacs starts.

Does that answer your question?