Re: update-directory-autoloads and package management systems

[Anselm Helbig]

Hi!

> there's a problem with "update-directory-autoloads", which exposes itself, 
> when
> you use some package management system, which builds Emacs in some temporary 
> build root
> and then -on user's machine- installs the files to default directories like 
> /usr/share
> 
> to reproduce the problem, add ";;;###autoload" to random defun
> in some lisp file in the distribution and then run M-x 
> update-directory-autoloads
> on some system that installed emacs from rpm or deb package:
> tested this on Fedora and Debian
> 
> the error message is:
> autoload-ensure-default-file: Opening output file: no such file or directory,
> /builddir/build/BUILD/emacs-22.2/lisp/loaddefs.el
> 
> the problem is, that you compile the lisp files 
> during the package creation, while you are in the temporary
> buildroot, so some path, relative to that, is stored inside the .elc
> 
> $ grep '/builddir/build/BUILD' /usr/share/emacs/22.3/lisp/*.elc
> -> every file matches
> 
> and when you install the rpm (or deb) on target system, the path is
> no longer there. package management systems which use chroot for compiling
> packages (on Arch Linux and Gentoo for example) do not suffer from this 
> problem, 
> because the path is the same in build and installation time - but deb and rpm 
> are
> not designed like this :(
> 
> is there a way to customize this path? building all the .elc files
> anew on the user's machine every update doesn't seem like a good
> solution to me...

You can shadow the `source-directory' variable like this:

  (let ((source-directory "/path/to/elisp/sources/"))
    (update-directory-autoloads "/path/to/scan/for/autoload/cookies"))

The important thing is that `update-directory-autoloads' wants to
write its output to

  (concat source-directory "lisp/loaddefs.el")

I use this for managing autoloads for packages installed in my home
directory. 

HTH, 

Anselm


-- 
Anselm Helbig 
mailto:anselm.helbig+news2009@googlemail.com