Re: Coding Convections - Enabling a feature by loading a file

[Peter S Galbraith]

Stefan Monnier <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> wrote:

> >>>>> "Peter" == Peter S Galbraith <psg@debian.org> writes:
> > feature').  But what is the rationale behind the loading of a package
> > having no visisble effect?  If the only purpose of a package is to
> 
> A package might be loaded implicitly by something like `customize'
> just to get the list of groups/variables it offers.  You wouldn't
> want to turn a feature ON just because you're browsing some of the
> related variables (you might even be browsing something that you didn't
> know was related).

But this is only true if its defcustoms are copied to another file,
right?  How else could it get loaded?  Or do you mean if the user loads
it in order to see its customizations?
 
> >      (require 'bar-cursor)
> >      (bar-cursor-mode 1)
> > instead of only:
> >      (require 'bar-cursor)
> 
> It should be only
> 
>    (bar-cursor-mode 1)
> 
> because bar-cursor-mode should be autoloaded.

But this is only true if autoloads are generated.  Is it standard
practice to do that for files added to someones site directory or for a
user under $HOME?  I know I've never done that (I might start now that I
think of it).

I'm not talking about a file are is part of Emacs, but one distributed
separately.  How strongly should we adhere to that coding convention?

Thanks!
-- 
Peter S. Galbraith, Debian Developer          <psg@debian.org>
                                 http://people.debian.org/~psg
GPG key 1024/D2A913A1 - 97CE 866F F579 96EE  6E68 8170 35FF 799E