Re: Why does Emacs's source tar archive contain *.elc files?

[Maksim Kislyakov <mail@kmaksim.dev>]

Thank you for your answer!

On 17.07.2024 16:16, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2024 15:45:48 +0300
>> From: Maksim Kislyakov <mail@kmaksim.dev>
>>
>>    I was playing around compiling Emacs from sources. At some point, I
>> have found out that '*.tar' files with Emacs sources contain '*.elc' files.
>>
>> As far as I understand, 'elc' is byte-compiled version of 'el' file.
> Yes.
>
>> - Why does the tar archive contain compiled sources? That seems strange.
>> Source code archive (which you use to compile program) contains compiled
>> code.
> For the same reason the tarball includes other generated files: Info
> manuals, the configure script, the few generated *.el files, the
> configure script, etc.: it makes the build faster and requires fewer
> development tools to be installed on the user's machine.
>
> The actual line between the files that are provided in the release
> tarballs and those which don't is NOT whether they are "compiled" in
> some sense, but rather whether they are architecture-dependent or not.
> The results of compiling *.c files are architecture-dependent, and
> likewise the *.eln files produced by native compilation of Lisp code.
> So we don't include those architecture-dependent files in the source
> tarballs.
>
>> - Also, what will happen if I apply some patch before compiling Emacs?
>> 'el' file's modification time will be newer that corresponding 'elc'
>> file's modification time.
> If you modify some of the *.el files, then the "make" command will
> recompile them and produce updated *.elc files.  Similarly with the
> *texi source files of the Info manuals, and other generated files
> which come with the tarball.