Updating autoloads

Updating autoloads

[Luc Teirlinck]

Forgetting to update one's loaddefs.el may yield much more varied and
less easily recognized classes of problems than INSTALL.CVS suggests.
If ldefs-boot.el got updated, updating Emacs will work fine, but if
the user did not update his loaddefs.el, errors will occur when
actually running the updated Emacs.  For instance, some users are
currently experiencing problems with the newly autoloaded
`desktop-buffer-mode-handlers'.

On my machine updating autoloads takes only a fraction of a second.
On slower machines, it maybe could take a few seconds, but that may be
worth avoiding periodic problems.  I guess that people who regularly
update Emacs use a script, so that typing is not a problem.  Assuming
that we are not going to make any changes to lisp/Makefile.in that
could get rid of the problems automatically, what about the following
change to INSTALL.CVS, which would recommend to always update
autoloads.  It would save CVS users the time to worry about fake bugs
and file bug reports on them and save us the time to have to
investigate these reports.

===File ~/INSTALL.CVS-diff==================================
*** INSTALL.CVS	02 Apr 2004 12:04:32 -0600	1.3
--- INSTALL.CVS	14 Aug 2005 11:06:17 -0500	
***************
*** 18,23 ****
--- 18,24 ----
    $ ./configure
    $ make
    $ cd lisp
+   $ make autoloads EMACS=../src/emacs
    $ make recompile EMACS=../src/emacs
    $ cd ..
    $ make
***************
*** 25,43 ****
  (If you want to install the Emacs binary, type "make install" instead
  of "make" in the last command.)
  
! Occasionally the file "lisp/loaddefs.el" will need be updated to reflect
! new autoloaded functions.  If you see errors about undefined lisp
! functions during compilation, that may be the reason.  Another symptom
! may be an error saying that "loaddefs.el" could not be found; this is
! due to a change in the way loaddefs.el was handled in CVS, and should
! only happen once, for users that are updating old CVS trees.
! 
! To update loaddefs.el, do:
! 
!   $ cd lisp
!   $ make autoloads EMACS=../src/emacs
! 
! If either of above procedures fails, try "make bootstrap".
  
  Users of non-Posix systems (MS-Windows etc.) should run the
  platform-specific configuration scripts (nt/configure.bat, config.bat,
--- 26,32 ----
  (If you want to install the Emacs binary, type "make install" instead
  of "make" in the last command.)
  
! If the above procedure fails, try "make bootstrap".
  
  Users of non-Posix systems (MS-Windows etc.) should run the
  platform-specific configuration scripts (nt/configure.bat, config.bat,
============================================================

Re: Updating autoloads

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 11:43:10 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>
> 
> On my machine updating autoloads takes only a fraction of a second.
> On slower machines, it maybe could take a few seconds, but that may be
> worth avoiding periodic problems.

Please let's not do that: updating autoloads can take _much_more_ than
a few seconds on slower machines.  When was the last time you did that
on a 400-MHz or 600-MHz box?

This issue is only relevant for people who use the CVS code.  Those
people should be knowledgeable enough to run "make autoloads" when
necessary.  Even if you yourself bump into this once in a while, it's
not a reason to make this change.

Let's not modify the build system except when we find _real_ bugs,
preferably not at all in targets that are only relevant to building
out of CVS.  Let's postpone that until after the release.

Re: Updating autoloads

[Luc Teirlinck]

   Let's not modify the build system except when we find _real_ bugs,
   preferably not at all in targets that are only relevant to building
   out of CVS.  Let's postpone that until after the release.

There appears to be some confusion here.  The patch I proposed was to
INSTALL.CVS, not to any of the Makefiles.

   Even if you yourself bump into this once in a while, it's
   not a reason to make this change.

I personally never bump into this.  I always use `make bootstrap' when
I update my CVS.

Sincerely,

Luc.

Re: Updating autoloads

[Luc Teirlinck]

>From my earlier message:

   On my machine updating autoloads takes only a fraction of a second.

I believe I forgot to notice that:

$ make autoloads EMACS=../src/emacs

apparently only updates autoloads for those Lisp files that have
changed since the last update.  Since my CVS was up to date that meant
no files, so obviously it was completely instantaneous.  (I personally
always use `make maintainer-clean' and `make-bootstrap' when I update
my CVS, so I have not a lot of experience with running `make autoloads'
manually.)

Still, if one updates regularly, it should rarely take a lot of time,
because not that many Lisp files will have changed, and if there were
a lot of Lisp changes, then it is extremely likely that some autoload
will have been added or the value of some autoloaded variable will have
changed, so that updating autoloads will probably be necessary.

Sincerely,

Luc.