Re: nongnu ELPA and slime

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Peter Hull <peterhull90@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Is this list the correct place to discuss nongnu ELPA?

Sure.

> I've come across a problem with the latest (2.29.1) SLIME package when
> installed from ELPA. Basically the package appears to install without
> problems but none of its functions are registered so it cannot be
> activated. There is more discussion on
> https://github.com/slime/slime/issues/808
>
> What I believe is happening is that the slime-2.29.1.tar on ELPA is
> being constructed without its hand-written slime-autoloads.el file. At
> install time, an autoload file is generated which doesn't work,
> because the relevant functions in SLIME are not marked with autoload
> cookies. The release tarball on github does have the autoloads file,
> as does slime-20240125.1336 from MELPA.

Do you know why they don't mark their functions with autoload cookies?
Writing a manual autoload file is very unusual.

> Unfortunately I've only ever been a user of emacs packages so I don't
> understand how it all works. Is there a way to specify that the
> slime-autoloads.el file needs to be included in the package, or will
> the relevant bits of SLIME need to be annotated so the generated file
> is functional?

It would be imaginable to configure the ELPA build server to not
overwrite the slime-autoloads.el file, but I'd first like to understand
why they take this route in the first place.

FWIW the quick fix for this issue is to add this to your init.el

(autoload 'slime-mode "slime")
(add-hook 'lisp-mode-hook 'slime-mode)

> Thanks for your help,
>
> Peter