Bug#422664: gettext-el: 50gettext.el setups when package removed (fwd)

[Santiago Vila]

Hello.

While checking old gettext bugs I found this one. It is a Debian packaging
bug but it's emacs-lisp related, so I hope somebody here could help.

The Debian gettext-el package contains, among other things, the
following files:

/etc/emacs/site-start.d/50gettext.el
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/gettext/po-compat.el
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/gettext/po-mode.el

50gettext.el is like this:

(setq auto-mode-alist
(cons '("\\.po[tx]?\\'\\|\\.po\\." . po-mode) auto-mode-alist))
(autoload 'po-mode "gettext/po-mode"
  "Major mode for translators to edit PO files" t)
(autoload 'po-find-file-coding-system "gettext/po-mode")
(unless (featurep 'po-find-file-coding-system)
  (autoload 'po-find-file-coding-system "gettext/po-compat"))
(if (fboundp 'modify-coding-system-alist)
  (modify-coding-system-alist 'file "\\.po[tx]?\\'\\|\\.po\\."
    'po-find-file-coding-system))

When gettext-el is removed but not purged, po-compat.el and po-mode.el
are no longer present, but 50gettext.el remains.

How could I modify 50gettext.el minimally so that it enters emacs
fundamental mode when po-mode.el is no longer available and the user
tries to edit a po file?

Thanks.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kevin Ryde <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 01:51:14 +1000
Subject: Bug#422664: gettext-el: 50gettext.el setups when package removed

Package: gettext-el
Version: 0.16.1-1
Severity: normal
File: /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50gettext.el

If gettext-el has been removed (dpkg --remove) but not purged, the
setups left by 50gettext.el do bad things when attempting to visit a
.po file.  Eg.

        emacs -q
        C-x C-f /tmp/x.po
        => Wrong type argument: stringp, nil

where I hoped to get a fundamental-mode buffer.  Same error for either
an existing x.po or starting a new file.

I think site start conf bits are meant to notice when their actual
package files have been removed, and suppress all (or nearly all)
setups.

[...]