Lazily loading notmuch into Emacs

Lazily loading notmuch into Emacs

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

I don't want to put (require 'notmuch) into my Emacs init because that
will slow down initial Emacs startup a fair bit, especially since my
(file which is equivalent to) notmuch-config.el does quite a bit of
processing to populate notmuch-saved-searches.

So I have this:

    ;; Ensure notmuch does its `message-mode' configuration and that my
    ;; notmuch-config.el gets loaded before certain commands happen.  An
    ;; alternative to advising `compose-mail' and friends here would be
    ;; to remap its keys to `notmuch-mua-new-mail', but it is nice to
    ;; have things work correctly if some lisp code somewhere calls
    ;; `compose-mail' or friends
    (defun spw/load-notmuch (&rest ignore)
      (require 'notmuch))
    (dolist (cmd '(compose-mail
                   compose-mail-other-window
                   compose-mail-other-frame
                   notmuch-jump-search
                   notmuch-hello))
      (advice-add cmd :before #'spw/load-notmuch))

    (global-set-key "\C-cs" #'notmuch-search)
    (global-set-key "\C-cm" #'notmuch-jump-search)
    (global-set-key "\C-cM" #'notmuch-hello)

This is not a very idiomatic way to make use of an ELPA package,
however.  Does anyone have a better approach that does not involve
advice-add?  I'm using the elpa-notmuch package on Debian.

-- 
Sean Whitton

Re: Lazily loading notmuch into Emacs

[David Edmondson]

On Monday, 2020-06-01 at 10:36:16 -07, Sean Whitton wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I don't want to put (require 'notmuch) into my Emacs init because that
> will slow down initial Emacs startup a fair bit, especially since my
> (file which is equivalent to) notmuch-config.el does quite a bit of
> processing to populate notmuch-saved-searches.
>
> So I have this:
>
>     ;; Ensure notmuch does its `message-mode' configuration and that my
>     ;; notmuch-config.el gets loaded before certain commands happen.  An
>     ;; alternative to advising `compose-mail' and friends here would be
>     ;; to remap its keys to `notmuch-mua-new-mail', but it is nice to
>     ;; have things work correctly if some lisp code somewhere calls
>     ;; `compose-mail' or friends
>     (defun spw/load-notmuch (&rest ignore)
>       (require 'notmuch))
>     (dolist (cmd '(compose-mail
>                    compose-mail-other-window
>                    compose-mail-other-frame
>                    notmuch-jump-search
>                    notmuch-hello))
>       (advice-add cmd :before #'spw/load-notmuch))
>
>     (global-set-key "\C-cs" #'notmuch-search)
>     (global-set-key "\C-cm" #'notmuch-jump-search)
>     (global-set-key "\C-cM" #'notmuch-hello)
>
> This is not a very idiomatic way to make use of an ELPA package,
> however.  Does anyone have a better approach that does not involve
> advice-add?  I'm using the elpa-notmuch package on Debian.

I'd hoped that:

(require 'notmuch-mua)
(setq mail-user-agent 'notmuch-user-agent)

would be sufficient to get things wired up, but it doesn't seem to be.

If we fix that, would it seem more appropriate? If we get it right then
it shouldn't load any other notmuch code (including notmuch-config.el)
until you actually use one of the functions.

(None of this will configure your chosen bindings of course, you'll
still have to do that yourself.)

dme.
-- 
Everybody's got something to hide, 'cept me and my monkey.

Re: Lazily loading notmuch into Emacs

[Sean Whitton]

Hello David,

On Tue 02 Jun 2020 at 12:41PM +01, David Edmondson wrote:

> I'd hoped that:
>
> (require 'notmuch-mua)
> (setq mail-user-agent 'notmuch-user-agent)
>
> would be sufficient to get things wired up, but it doesn't seem to be.
>
> If we fix that, would it seem more appropriate? If we get it right then
> it shouldn't load any other notmuch code (including notmuch-config.el)
> until you actually use one of the functions.

It's probably better than using advice-add, assuming that bytecompiled
notmuch-mua.el loads quickly.

I wonder if maybe notmuch-mua.el could be split into a small file the
user can 'require in their init, which just has the
define-mail-user-agent call, and then there's a larger .el file
containing an autoload cookie and definition for 'notmuch-mua-mail, and
everything else?

I'm also advising notmuch-jump-search and notmuch-hello, as otherwise I
noticed notmuch-config.el doesn't get loaded if you use one of those
right after starting Emacs.  I think the fix there is to add (require
'notmuch) to the top of notmuch-jump.el and notmuch-hello.el?

-- 
Sean Whitton