Re: reftex.el autoloads

[phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord)]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> The intuitive solution is do
>> 
>> $(lisp)/loaddefs.el $(lisp)/textmodes/reftex-loadefs.el $(AND_ALL_THE_OTHERS): $(LOADDEFS)
>> 	@echo Directories for loaddefs: ${SUBDIRS_ALMOST}
>> 	$(AM_V_GEN)$(emacs) -l autoload \
>> 	    --eval '(setq autoload-ensure-writable t)' \
>> 	    --eval '(setq autoload-builtin-package-versions t)' \
>> 	    --eval '(setq generated-autoload-file (expand-file-name (unmsys--file-name "$@")))' \
>> 	    -f batch-update-autoloads ${SUBDIRS_ALMOST}
>> 
>> but this fails because make actually runs batch-update-autoloads
>> multiple times which is both wasteful and causes a race condition with
>> -j.
>
> Several alternative solutions for this were tried, and all of them
> were found out as worse than the problem.


Indeed. It's something make just does not support well. The only
solution I have is to add makefile rules for each -loaddefs.el file
listing all dependencies. They don't change that often, so it's
possible, but I don't think it is worth it.

As I said at the beginning, personally, for the small files, I would
have placed the autoloads into loaddefs.el, and for the bigger files
(dired.el, reftex.el and ibuffer) I would remove this mechanism and
replace it with a simple require.


>> As this doesn't work, I didn't do it (I tried it!). Instead, I added
>> autoloads-force. It's ugly, but it's explicit and ugly rather than
>> implicit and ugly.
>
> This has never been a problem in practice, so I don't think that
> additional rule is needed.

I used it repeatedly to make the commits, and anyone adding new
autoloads to any of the autoloaded files would find it useful. And the
comment is more useful -- it too me a while to work out why the loaddefs
files where NOT being produced by make autoloads

But, feel free to remove it, if you wish. It's not a big deal.

Phil