bug#14746: 24.3.50; update-file-autoloads: Generate absolute paths?

bug#14746: 24.3.50; update-file-autoloads: Generate absolute paths?

[Jambunathan K]

1. C-x C-f ~/src/private/orgmuse.el
2. M-x update-file-autoloads
   
   When prompted for the where to write, say ~/.emacs

3. Now this is what gets dumped in to .emacs.

      ,----
      | \f
      | ;;;### (autoloads nil "src/private/orgmuse" "src/private/orgmuse.el"
      | ;;;;;;  (20942 20756 0 0))
      | ;;; Generated autoloads from src/private/orgmuse.el
      | 
      | (autoload 'orgmuse-edit "src/private/orgmuse" "\
      | 
      | 
      | \(fn &optional WIKINAME PAGENAME)" t nil)
      | 
      | (autoload 'orgmuse-post "src/private/orgmuse" "\
      | 
      | 
      | \(fn)" t nil)
      | 
      | ;;;***
      `----

4. Note the absence of "~" prefix.  I believe the file paths generated
   are relative.

5. Now reload emacs.

6. See that orgmuse.el is not getting loaded.  

   NOTE: I don't have a require for orgmuse in .emacs.  This was
   intentional.

Expected behaviour:

One of

1. Eithe M-x update-file-autoloads should generate absolute filepaths.
2. (autoload ...) should be accomodative of relative paths in it's arguments.
   

In GNU Emacs 24.3.50.3 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.20.1)
 of 2013-06-28 on debian-6.05
Bzr revision: 113214 yamaoka@jpl.org-20130628080321-u41m6vp30fd5efyq
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10707000
Important settings:
  value of $LANG: en_IN
  locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1-unix
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

bug#14746: 24.3.50; update-file-autoloads: Generate absolute paths?

[Stefan Monnier]

> 1. Eithe M-x update-file-autoloads should generate absolute filepaths.
> 2. (autoload ...) should be accomodative of relative paths in it's arguments.

The way autoload works is that it looks through load-path, and
autoload.el expects that the file containing those autoloads will be
placed in a directory that appears in load-path.

IOW, you're using it in a way that is very different from the one intended.

We could probably add a config var to make it work the way you expect,
tho we usually prefer relative file names, which makes the file
position-independent to some extent.

E.g. you could have a ~/elisp directory, then you could place all your
Elisp packages somewhere underneath ~/elisp and you can then do

1. C-x C-f ~/elisp/private/orgmuse.el
2. M-x update-file-autoloads
   When prompted for the where to write, say ~/elisp/autoloads

and in Emacs just add (load "~/elisp/autoloads").  And also add

  (add-to-list 'load-path (or (file-name-directory #$) (car load-path)))

at the beginning of ~/elisp/autoloads.


        Stefan

bug#14746: 24.3.50; update-file-autoloads: Generate absolute paths?

[Jambunathan K]

OP here.  Closed.