[gentoo-dev] (emacs) proposed site-lisp and byte-compilation improvements

[Matthew Kennedy <mkennedy@gentoo.org>]

Hi,

I'd like to get a discussion going about possible improvements to
GNU Emacs on Gentoo.  If you got CCed make sure to reply to the
list.  Here are some ideas I've had.

* Firstly, please review this: 

   http://dev.gentoo.org/~mkennedy/emacs/site-gentoo.el-rfc.txt

I would like to see us move to something like the above for
customization.

In no particular order, here are some other changes I propose:

* Move away from the big concatenation of
  /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/*-gentoo.el into
  /usr/share/site-lisp/site-start.el.

Instead, leave site-start.el alone, and create a site-gentoo.el which
loads each *-gentoo.el file (call these "site hooks") pragmatically.
This has the benefit of freeing up site-start.el for user usage.  The
programmatic approach also allows for the possibility of the user
defining their own site hooks.

* Byte-Compile site-gentoo.el and all site hooks

Perhaps this will make for more rapid load times.

* Install elisp source in such a way that global recompilation is
  possible.

It is a "dirty little secret" that our .elc files from add-on elisp
packages are able to persist between emacs major and minor version
upgrades.  The format of byte-compilation can change between releases,
and allowing these old .elc files to be loaded into an updated emacs
can cause it to crash.

I suggest we provide a way to recompile all .el files for elisp add-on
packages (typically from the app-emacs/ category, but also from
ebuilds supporting the emacs USE flag).  This mechanism should be
called whenever a new emacs upgrade is performed.

We should probably keep a separate source archive directory somewhere
so we can compile for multiple emacs implementations
(eg. app-editors/emacs and app-editors/emacs-cvs).  We should take
whatever steps are necessary to ensure find-function/variable/library
etc. still work properly.

* emacs and emacs-cvs coexistence

Following on from the previous point, it would be nice to clean up
app-editors/emacs and app-editors/emacs-cvs so they co-exist more
cleanly. (provide and /usr/bin/emacs and a /usr/bin/emacs-cvs -- I
know there's already a version number symlink there).

* Your Thoughts Here...


Matt

-- 
Matthew Kennedy
Gentoo Linux Developer

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