Re: Has something changed in the autoload mechanism in Emacs 29?

[Michael Heerdegen via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

Pierre Rouleau <prouleau001@gmail.com> writes:

> > What's the result of evaluating (symbol-function 'pel-generic-find-file)
> > in the situation where the describe command reports the wrong location?
> >
> > The result is:
>
> #[513 "\300
>
>
>  \3011^\^@\211\203^P^@\211^BB\202^Q^@^A\302^A!\303^E^B\"\266\2020\207\210\304\207"
>  [pel-ffind-project-directory (user-error) delete-dups pel-ffind nil] 8
>  ("/Users/roup/my/dv/elisp/pel/pel-ffind.elc" . 3424)]

> The path /Users/roup/my/dv/elisp/pel/pel-ffind.elc is correct.

But isn't this a byte-code function and not an autoload function?  With
a reference to the source of the docstring (when using
`byte-compile-dynamic-docstrings')?


> Yet the *Help* buffer created by (describe-symbol 'pel-generic-find-file) ,
> which returns 1,
> shows the function being defined in pel_keys.el instead of the pel-ffind.el,
> followed by the proper docstring.
>
> pel-generic-find-file is an autoloaded byte-compiled Lisp function in
> ‘pel_keys.el’.

Maybe looking at `load-history' can reveal why this file is mentioned.


> Was there not a change in Emacs 28?  I'll have to go back and read the
> release notes.

Ok, yes, there had been the switch from autoloads.el to loaddefs-gen.el
with Emacs 29.


> If there's nothing obvious as to what changed in the auto loading
> mechanism then I'll need to test more on the affected platform and
> test on others.
>
> I should probably look at the code that describe-symbol and see
> where it gets the source file associated with the symbol.

When `find-lisp-object-file-name' is involved, I would try to edebug
that, as a promising starting point.


Michael.