Re: [AUCTeX-devel] XEmacs sync with 11.84: almost; some questions remain

[David Kastrup]

Uwe Brauer <address@hidden> writes:

>>>>>> "David" == David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
> thanks for your rapid answer.
>    > Uwe Brauer <address@hidden> writes:
>
>    > For people using old methods of loading AUCTeX, they might result in
>    > confusion and different behavior.
>
> Ok, I have to understand a thing (as you might have guessed I am still
> using 11.53), how is auctex supposed to be loaded:
>
>     -  It is automatically loaded nothing has to be done auctex
>        replaces the standard Latex mode. This is what you say below right.
>
>     -  If so what would cause (require 'tex-site) in the init file?

Looking at the current files, it would appear that nothing bad happens
(except that it becomes impossible to unload auctex again, but that
would not be a problem if people load it explicitly).

However, the XEmacs package we distribute upstream does not have
tex-site.el

> Here it comes 
>
> ,----
> | ;;; tex-site.el - Site specific variables.  Don't edit.
> | 

[...]

> | (defvar TeX-lisp-directory
> |   (expand-file-name "auctex" (file-name-directory load-file-name))
> |   "The directory where most of the AUCTeX lisp files are located.
> | For the location of lisp files associated with
> | styles, see the variables TeX-style-* (hand-generated lisp) and
> | TeX-auto-* (automatically generated lisp).")

That looks wrong.  It will only be correct if tex-site.el is kept in
the parent directory of most other AUCTeX lisp files, and those are in
a subdirectory called "auctex".

> | (add-to-list 'load-path TeX-lisp-directory)
> | 
> | (defvar TeX-data-directory
> |   (expand-file-name "auctex" (file-name-directory load-file-name))
> |   "The directory where the AUCTeX non-Lisp data is located.")

Same here.  You should not juggle files around manually, or all the
directory-relative information will get messed up.

If you want some configuration file to end up in a certain place after
installation, _tell_ configure about it when generating the files.
Even when you plan on copying them to those places yourself.

Otherwise, all the relative paths get completely messed up.

> | (defcustom TeX-auto-global
> |     "/usr/local/var/auctex"
> |   "*Directory containing automatically generated information.
> | Must end with a directory separator.
> | 
> | For storing automatic extracted information about the TeX macros
> | shared by all users of a site."
> |   :group 'TeX-file
> |   :type 'directory)

This again is likely to be wrong since one can't expect it to work on
arbitrary systems.

Sigh.

I suggest that you consult auto-autoloads.el in the XEmacs package
tarball provided by AUCTeX: it basically is a concatenation of
autogenerated autoloads with the previous contents of tex-site.el and
the preview-latex configuration.

> It seems reasonable to me, that is as I understand I should NOT
> include the tex-site file? 
> What happens to people who upgrade from 11.53 to 11.84 and have their 
> (require 'tex-site) in their init file. Do they get a warning?

An error.

> To summarise. It seems that I should exclude tex-site?

Not its contents: those belong in auto-autoloads.el (it does not
actually make sense putting them elsewhere since tex-site.el does not
hold user-configurable data anymore even if you keep a file with this
name).  But they need to be the correct contents, created for the
purpose of working in the actual place they are installed into.

Either generated by calling the upstream configure with the _correct_
options (it is not like the xemacs-package target in the upstream
Makefile.in does not show how to do this) or by just taking the
upstream auto-autoloads.el content.

-- 
David Kastrup