Re: emacs packages

[Alex Kost]

Mark H Weaver (2015-06-17 21:42 +0300) wrote:

> Federico Beffa <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> What do you think about the attached implementation?
>
> [...]
>
>> +(define (emacs-byte-compile files)
>> +  "Byte compile FILES, a list of file names."
>> +  (if (pair? files)
>> +      (for-each (lambda (f)
>> +                  (let ((expr `(let ()
>> +                                 (push ,(dirname f) load-path)
>> +                                 (byte-compile-file ,f))))
>> +                    (emacs-batch-eval expr)))
>> +                files)
>> +      (error "emacs-byte-compile failed: not a list of files!" files)))
>> +
>
> I would prefer to let an emacs expert (Alex?) comment on this, but here

(I don't consider myself an expert, I'm definitely much less experienced
with Emacs than you or Ludovic.)

> are some preliminary comments:
>
> * I wouldn't bother checking the type of 'files', since 'for-each' will
>   do that.  Also, () is a list but not a pair.
>
> * Maybe use 'progn' instead of 'let ()' ?
>
> * Instead of launching a separate emacs process for each file, how about
>   passing the list of filenames into emacs and do the loop within emacs
>   itself?

I totally agree with these comments.  However since the goal is to
compile all elisp files in some directory, perhaps we may just use
'byte-recompile-directory' instead of looping 'byte-compile-file'.

Also I think there is a problem.  An emacs package can require other
packages, so for a successful compiling, 'load-path' should be augmented
not only with the directory of the original package, but with the
directories of the required packages as well.

-- 
Alex