Re: New emacsen-common problems - we need to discuss emacsen-policy.
I propose that rather than putting that init snippet into
`site-start', it ought to be put into a `debian-start.el', and then
the `startup.el' codes that load `site-start.el' ought to be
patched...
We could add a run-hooks in there at the right location, and send the
patch for that upstream... then also add support in the build/dump
setup for adding a distribution/builder specific extra dumped lisp.
Other sites / distributions could make use of it too, I think. Maybe
there's already a hook in there for that matter.
We'd then dump in our `debian-start.elc', and at toplevel of it, do
an `add-hook' to the new hook list, so that our Debian stuff runs at
the right time during initialization. It can check for the
`--no-site-file' switch, and whatever else it needs to do.
I would also patch the location of `site-start.el' and `default.el',
to locate them down under "/etc/$emacsflav/". Perhaps that location
can be made build-time configurable, and the patch submitted upstream
also? Other sites / distributions may find that useful also.
We should distribute blank `site-start' and `default' programs with
our emacsen packages -- ones with only a comment header, describing
what this init program is for and when it is run with regards to the
user init file.
I think that there should also be a set of
"/etc/$emacsflav/local-init.d/" directories supported, for local use
only.
Rob, are you aware that XEmacs now uses "auto-autoloads.el" programs?
They are autogenerated by Makefile's in the `xemacs-packages' (the
CVS controlled Lisp that's on cvs.xemacs.org, which used to ship with
XEmacs but has now been unbundled...) at the same time they are
byte-compiled. When XEmacs starts up, it computes a load path by
recursing down several starting points, then loads all of the
"auto-autoloads.el"'s that it finds there. Throughout the XEmacs
lisp package code there are ";;;###autoload" markers used to generate
the automatic autoloads programs.
Because of that, I think that perhaps the "/etc/xemacs*/site-start.d"
stuff may need adjusting... or maybe not - the maintainers of the
elisp deb packages may already be aware of this. (?) In many cases,
there's already a version of something shipped as part of the XEmacs
packages. I think ideally there ought to be a separate package for
each of the XEmacs package lisp programs. That will take a lot of
work, and the effort MUST be co-ordinated with the XEmacs development
team. I plan to do some work on this... I've a small start on it.
Hopefully over the summer here, I'll have time for it.
When new lisp is being installed, and when the XEmacs byte-compile
happens, an auto-autoloads.el and a custom-load.el ought to be
generated. Recipes for doing this are in the XEmacs
`xemacs-packages' source, which you can get from
CVS. (http://cvs.xemacs.org).
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