Re: sendmail-program default is determined at compilation time

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     sendmail-program is defined in paths.el as:
>
> I think that just moving it to sendmail.el would prevent the value
> from being chosen at dump time.  Does that work?
>
> Whether to do this requires a little bit of thought.  I think it was
> put in paths.el specifically so that the value would be chosen at dump
> time.  I think the motive for that was to save time when first loading
> sendmail.el.
>
> It is possible that the delay is now insignificant.
> Would people please try that change?

The delay is indeed insignificant.

There is one complication: putting sendmail-program in sendmail.el
means that it won't be available unless sendmail.el is loaded (unless
we autoload it, which defeats the purpose of setting its default at
compile time).  I don't know if any other parts of Emacs assume it is
available.

At worst, we could initialize it in startup.el.