Re: A couple of things that I think should be in byte bytecode meta comments

[Rocky Bernstein <rocky@gnu.org>]

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There is a bit of flexibility in how run-time systems handle denoting the
file name. One thing that is often done is give the path as it was
specified in the compile command. This could be ./byte-comp.el or
./emacs-lisp/byte-comp.el  (And from this you might see where I'm going
with this).

One run-time system for a programming language I am familiar with started
with the what I described (use path as given in invocation) and then and
switched to turning everything into an absolute path. Personally, I like
giving both when the starting point was indeed a relative path.

Now as to the portability. Yes, if the file is run on another system, the
path isn't exact. But it does give some idea of what we are talking as you
git closer to the bottom of the path and that may be helpful.

Consider cases where I have a stable and development branch and then
install into say /usr/local/share/emacs/lisp. Even though the top-level
directories are not the same, it still is useful to know where in the
source code tree (whether on my system or not).

And I recall one Emacs package that concatenated a bunch of bytecode files
xx-a.elc xx-b.elc and called the result xx.elc. Although unusual, with the
filenames in the bytecode, you can unscramble this .

And finally there will be cases where the path is exact.

In sum, just because sometimes it doesn't work out, doesn't mean it
will be *totally
*meaningless all the time. And I prefer "sometimes useful" to no
information, however accurate that is.


On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 1:30 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > From: Rocky Bernstein <rocky@gnu.org>
> > Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2017 12:55:15 -0500
> >
> > I mean file path or file name, not the file contents.
>
> You mean, the absolute file name of the source file?  But then the
> byte-compiled file will be unportable, as the file name will be
> different on another system.
>

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