Re: searching elisp on debian/ubuntu

[Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com>]

On Friday, October 25, 2013 2:40:52 PM UTC+5:30, Alex Bennée wrote:
> Rustom Mody wrote:
> 
> > [This is more about debian ubuntu than emacs]
> >
> > When looking for something in elisp on debian/ubuntu there is the
> > nuisance that the files are gzipped.  So Ive to do things like
> 
> What sort of things are you looking for?

eg Figure out how the function 'make-translation-table' is used in elisp
etc etc

> > find /usr/share/emacs/23.4/lisp *.gz|xargs zgrep <something>
> 
> 
> Everything in your site-lisp should be visible within emacs even if they
> are autoloaded functions to start with.


> 
> 
> > because zgrep unlike grep has no recursive flag
> 
> >
> 
> > I believe that there is some dpkg/apt flag that says keep the files
> > unzipped.
> 
> 
> Not really. The files are in the package in their gzipped form. They get
> processed by various scripts but essentially they are as they are.

Heres a small snippet of directories.

$ pwd
/usr/share/emacs/24.3/lisp

$ ls
abbrev.elc             foldout.elc           pcmpl-gnu.elc
abbrev.el.gz           foldout.el.gz         pcmpl-gnu.el.gz
align.elc              follow.elc            pcmpl-linux.elc
align.el.gz            follow.el.gz          pcmpl-linux.el.gz
allout.elc             font-core.elc         pcmpl-rpm.elc
allout.el.gz           font-core.el.gz       pcmpl-rpm.el.gz
allout-widgets.elc     font-lock.elc         pcmpl-unix.elc
allout-widgets.el.gz   font-lock.el.gz       pcmpl-unix.el.gz


As you can see all files are elc or gzipped el.

> 
> > Anyone know of it?
> 
> However auto-compression-mode is your friend. You can visit .gz files
> withing Emacs and it will automagically deal with gz files for you.

Oh emacs opens gzipped files alright, so I guess auto-compression is working.