Re: w3m-el-snapshot installation

[Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de>]

Haines,

> When I try to run the w3m command in an emacs session without any init
> file, I get "[no match]".

I assume you mean emacs -q.  (for emacs -Q, this would be normal).

> However, if in dired I do "! w3m", it does not
> complain and displays a text file. Not sure of the significance of
> this. Is there both an internal and an external w3m command?

w3m is a stand-alone browser.  "w3m-el" and "w3m-el-snapshot" provide the
interface for using it from Emacs.

> I find w3m .el files in /usr/share/emacs/site-list/w3m, but no relevant
> files elsewhere, whether they be .el or .elc.

Then at least the el source files were installed.  I think it's normal
that these are not used, since your Emacs searches for the byte compiled
files in another directory.

>> Use M-x locate-library w3m RET to check if your emacs uses the right
>> w3m library. 
> 
> Interesting. "No library w3m in search path". I could not infer from the
> w3m-el-shapshot package description that w3m requires libraries.

In Emacs-speak, every Emacs Lisp file is called a "library".  This just
means that Emacs can't find any file named "w3m".

If you get this for emacs -q, then indeed there's something wrong with
your installation.

> It seems that I have a broken w3m snapshot installation, for it did not
> install libraries, and it did not create the /usr/share/emacs23/w3m
> directory to hold elc files. Is that your impression as well?

My impression is that the installation script (on my host this is
"/usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/w3m-el-snapshot") failed
to byte compile the el source files, dunno why.

I would suggest to purge the "w3m-el-snapshot" package (key _ in
aptitude), and install it again.  Please watch the output.  Does it
say something about byte-compiling?

> I also find that I do not have w3m-el installed, although my impression
> is that installing w3m-el-snapshot should install it, replacing an an
> older version. However, w3m-el-snaphot does not specify what old version
> is incompatible and what new version replaces it. In any case, I don't
> have it.
>
> I installed w3m-el-snapshot with aptitude. Should I have first removed
> the w3m and perhaps w3m-el packages before trying to install
> w3m-el-snapshot?

No.  If you have successfully installed "w3m-el-snapshot" with aptitude,
it should work.  No matter what you did before etc.  (It is only
important that you use the original Debian installation of Emacs, and
not a version you've built yourself.)

"w3m-el-snapshot" depends on "w3m" and conflicts with "w3m-el" (at least
for my Debian testing).  That means, if you install "w3m-el-snapshot",
"w3m" will be installed automatically, and "w3m-el" must be removed if
it is currently installed.  As far as I know, aptitude does not allow to
perform any action that would break these rules, so you never get an
inconsistent state of package dependencies.



Regards,

Michael.