Re: Dynamic loading progress

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> * pick a new syntax and teach make-docfile how to parse it. This is
>> the clean approach IMO, but it requires more work. We can use a
>> sufficiently simple syntax so that it can be embedded in comments in
>> other languages than C.
>> * define DEFVAR/DEFUN macro in module API header file to a noop so
>> that make-docfile can parse it as it is.
>
> You're talking about how to get docstrings from the source code, but
> I think we should expect Emacs to need/fetch them during "load" at which
> point we'll be looking at the compiled code.  So the first question is
> where should those docstrings (regardless of whether they were found and
> prepared by make-docfile or by some new tool) be located?  Inside the
> .so file?  Is the source code which should be placed nearby?  In some
> kind of separate DOC file?

At one point, we agreed that the module C code doc strings only need to be
accessible after the module is loaded. That can be done with a function
call in the module initialize function, along with the defun call. In
that case, the doc strings are in the .so file.

If the module author wants some doc strings to be accessible before load
time, they can be on autoloaded functions in elisp code.

-- 
-- Stephe