Re: Request for site-lisp-directory

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl> writes:

> I want to make a plea for a new lisp-level variable
> `site-lisp-directory' similar to `data-directory' and
> `exec-directory'. In my AUCTeX tex-site.el I now have:
>
> (defvar TeX-lisp-directory
> "/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/site-lisp/auctex" ...
>
> I would prefer the location-independent:
>
> (expand-file-name "auctex" site-lisp-directory)
>
> Of course it is possible to say:
> (defvar site-lisp-directory (expand-file-name "../site-lisp"
> data-directory)) but I think it is cleaner if this is setup by the
> initialization code.

Hold your horses.  I am right now overhauling the installation
procedure of AUCTeX, and indeed it will make TeX-lisp-directory (and
other stuff) typically be set to a relative path location (namely
something like
(expand-file-name "something" (file-name-directory load-file-name))

This is more a problem of the installation procedure of AUCTeX rather
than Emacs.

And it can't be solved by Emacs, anyway: packages delivered by your OS
distribution vendor will be placed in a directory different (and later
in load-path) than packages installed per-site.  Having a
"site-lisp-directory" in the manner you envision would mean that one
could not have AUCTeX working _both_ when installed by the OS
installation procedures _as well_ as as part of the site-local
installations (probably with a newer version).

I don't think there is much within Emacs itself that can be provided
and result in consistently being of help here.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum