Re: eudc fails with bbdb

[Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com>]

Sébastien Kirche wrote:
 > Le 14 Apr 2005, Kevin Rodgers vraute :
 >>The eudc-bbdb-extract-phones function was compiled without the
 >>bbdb-record-phones macro defined, so it was assumed to be a function.
 >>
 >>This problem would be prevented if the eudc-bbdb-extract-phones source
 >>file had
 >>
 >>	(eval-when-compile (require 'bbdb-foo))
 >>
 >>assuming bbdb-record-phones is defined in bbdb-foo.el, which provides
 >>the bbdb-foo feature.
 >
 > Many thanks for that explanation !
 >
 > Actually i had found with Google  that 4 years ago you already explained
 > why such a call was failing :
 > 
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/browse_frm/thread/f1d56b88c1ae9b1f/8d24edc422c9ac0c
 >
 > But I was not able to find out the solution.

M-x byte-compile-file RET eudc-bbdb.el RET

 > BTW  : as  eudc is  part of  Emacs,  maybe i  should send  a request  to
 > emacs-devel for adding  the eval-when-compile ? Or maybe  Stefan, if you
 > are reading this... Or is it a normal case ?

But bbdb is not part of Emacs, and so the eudc-bbdb library which
depends on it is definitely abnormal.  eudc-bbdb.el does try to do the
right thing:

(require 'eudc)
(if (not (featurep 'bbdb))
     (load-library "bbdb"))
(if (not (featurep 'bbdb-com))
     (load-library "bbdb-com"))

but the Lisp files in the Emacs distribution are presumably compiled
without any add-on libraries available.  I think if those were changed
to the conventional usage:

(require 'eudc)
(require 'bbdb)
(require 'bbdb-com)

then eudc-bbdb.el would fail to compile in a bare Emacs, so a bogus
eudc-bbdb.elc would not be distributed.  As long as Emacs can be built
without every .el file being successfully compiled, that would be fine.

-- 
Kevin Rodgers