Re: A quick question about byte-compilation

[Colin Walters <walters@debian.org>]

Gergely Nagy <algernon@debian.org> writes:

> - package erc, and include the mentioned three scripts and avoid their
>   byte-compilation in the postinst, and add the appropriate Suggests:

Why avoid their byte-compilation?  You will get gobs of errors about
undefined functions, but the resulting bytecode should still work if
bbdb or whatever is installed later.

I favor using just one package, and having the appropriate Suggests.

What erc could probably do (if it doesn't already), is just try to
load e.g. bbdb, and if it is not available then throw an error:

(defun erc-interact-with-bbdb ()
  (unless (require 'bbdb nil t)
    (error "bbdb not available"))
  (do-stuff-with-bbdb-1)
  (do-stuff-with-bbdb-2))

Your Debian diff could even modify these error messages:

  (unless (require 'bbdb nil t)
    (error "bbdb not available; install the 'bbdb' package"))