Re: reftex.el autoloads

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

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

> Phillip Lord wrote:
>
>>>> 2) Just putting the autoloads into loaddefs.el.
>>>
>>> That's just plain wrong. Please don't do that.
>>
>> It may be wrong, but it's not plain. I assumed that there was a reason
>> for not doing this. But I still do not understand what that reason is.
>> Can you please tell me what is wrong with it, because I cannot figure it
>> out?
>
> I don't know if I can explain it well.
> Basically, code should be loaded where it needs to be loaded, not at the
> global level to work around some perceived problem with the toolchain.

Yep, well that is the point of autoloads, and that would be true where
ever the autoloads are.

In this case, you mean "autoloads should be loaded only when the
functions that they load might need to be loaded, as opposed to a global
when they might need to be loaded, but less might".

Still, it's not worth arguing about that much. I can maintain the status
quo in this respect, so I will do, even if I think it should be
simplified further.

>
>>> to load foo-loadefs.el (which in many cases will be tiny files).
>>
>> Yes, some of them are pretty small.
>
> That was the traditional deciding criterion.
>
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-09/msg00264.html
>
> The reftex example is surely on the wrong side of that, but as the
> commit message says, it was replacing prevous hand-written autoloads
> that were in reftex.el.


There's actually a bionomial distribution -- about half the files are
under 10, and the other half average around 50 (starting at 20). But I
see no point in moving half, and will just do them all.

Phil