debugging load failure

debugging load failure

[Ross Boylan]

I am new to debugging elisp.

My .emacs file includes (load "ess-site").  This used to work, but no
longer seems effective--there is no sign that ESS has been loaded.
There is also no error, and nothing in *Messages* indicating a problem.
Other code in .emacs is being evaluated.

emacs --debug-init doesn't help (that is, emacs launches the same way it
does without the option), presumably because there is no error.

I would like to trace through and see what's going on.

With the cursor inside (load "ess-site") M-x edebug-eval-top-level-form
starts the debugger.  I then hit "i", which I think is the way to step
into the lower level evaluations.

This asks for a C source file (apparently the load is defined internally
in C) which a) is not on my system; b) doesn't seem as if it would be
meaningful to an elisp debugger; and c) is not likely to be where the
problem lies.  I really want to see the code in ess-site.  At any rate,
I can't get past this  step.

How can I get my hands on something to debug?

I do have the ess-site.el, and tried putting (edebug) inside of it.  I
think this brought up the regular debugger (since it was not edebug
instrumented), but it didn't show me where I was in the source and I
couldn't do anything useful.  (It also show the load command is loading
the file).  Probably a more experienced person could do something
useful, but I could use some help.  I think I want to use edebug not
debug since the former is friendlier.

Running emacs 23.4.1 on Debian GNU/Linux (wheezy).

Thanks.
Ross Boylan

P.S. I would appreciate a cc on the response.

Re: debugging load failure

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ross Boylan <ross@biostat.ucsf.edu>
> Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 13:00:12 -0700
> 
> My .emacs file includes (load "ess-site").  This used to work, but no
> longer seems effective--there is no sign that ESS has been loaded.
> There is also no error, and nothing in *Messages* indicating a problem.
> Other code in .emacs is being evaluated.

So why do you think ess-site is not loaded.  All the signs you
mentioned say otherwise.

You can put

  (message "ess-site start")

at the beginning of your ess-site.el, and see if that message gets
displayed and logged in the *Messages* buffer.

Re: debugging load failure [vanished?]

[Ross Boylan]

The loading seems to be successful now, even though I haven't changed
anything--except that I did edit ess-site.el, adding and then removing
(edebug).

Could there have been some compiled version that got cleared out by
that process?

Some more details on the failure I was experiencing below.

On Sat, 2013-09-14 at 13:00 -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> I am new to debugging elisp.
> 
> My .emacs file includes (load "ess-site").  This used to work, but no
> longer seems effective--there is no sign that ESS has been loaded.
> There is also no error, and nothing in *Messages* indicating a problem.
> Other code in .emacs is being evaluated.

Eli wrote:

> So why do you think ess-site is not loaded.  All the signs you
> mentioned say otherwise.
> 
> You can put
> 
>   (message "ess-site start")
> 
> at the beginning of your ess-site.el, and see if that message gets
> displayed and logged in the *Messages* buffer.
> 

I say the load was ineffective because
1) M-x ess <complete> doesn't get anything
2) M-x r  is an unknown command
3) There is no *ESS* buffer

More recently it has been clear that ess-site.el was loading, because
when I put (edebug) in it a debugger came up.


Ross


> 
> emacs --debug-init doesn't help (that is, emacs launches the same way it
> does without the option), presumably because there is no error.
> 
> I would like to trace through and see what's going on.
> 
> With the cursor inside (load "ess-site") M-x edebug-eval-top-level-form
> starts the debugger.  I then hit "i", which I think is the way to step
> into the lower level evaluations.
> 
> This asks for a C source file (apparently the load is defined internally
> in C) which a) is not on my system; b) doesn't seem as if it would be
> meaningful to an elisp debugger; and c) is not likely to be where the
> problem lies.  I really want to see the code in ess-site.  At any rate,
> I can't get past this  step.
> 
> How can I get my hands on something to debug?
> 
> I do have the ess-site.el, and tried putting (edebug) inside of it.  I
> think this brought up the regular debugger (since it was not edebug
> instrumented), but it didn't show me where I was in the source and I
> couldn't do anything useful.  (It also show the load command is loading
> the file).  Probably a more experienced person could do something
> useful, but I could use some help.  I think I want to use edebug not
> debug since the former is friendlier.
> 
> Running emacs 23.4.1 on Debian GNU/Linux (wheezy).
> 
> Thanks.
> Ross Boylan
> 
> P.S. I would appreciate a cc on the response.
>