batch-update-autoloads / update-directory-autoloads problem

[David Reitter]

This may just be a problem with some external package, or with  
`update-directory-autoloads', which uses `source-directory' to  
determine the autoloads file, which it shouldn't do if the function  
is to be used outside of the Emacs build process.

In his case, the directory in source-directory does not exist because  
the binary is not run on the machine that Emacs was compiled on.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Christian Lynbech <address@hidden>
> Date: 25 February 2007 16:23:04 GMT
> To: Development of Aquamacs Emacs <address@hidden>
> Subject: [Aquamacs-devel] batch-update-autoloads problem
> Reply-To: Development of Aquamacs Emacs <address@hidden>
>
> I am trying to install a package (LiveJournal emacs client) that calls
> upon `batch-update-autoloads' to generate the package specific
> autoloads. However, it bails out with the error below.
>
> For the experiment, I have first set this:
>
>     (setq generated-autoload-file "ljupdate.el"
>           command-line-args-left '("."))
>
> but as witnessed by the error below, it talks about an ljupdate.el
> inside of "/Users/dr" which I would guess refers to Davids
> userid. There is no abvious setting inside of autoload.el itself
> reflecting the problem.
>
> Changing the value of `generated-autoload-file' to an absolute path
> circumvented the problem but this is not how the makefile in question
> was written, so I think this should be fixed.
>
>     Debugger entered--Lisp error: (file-error "Opening output file"  
> "no such file or directory" "/Users/dr/Aquamacs/emacs/lisp/ 
> ljupdate.el")
>       write-region(";;; ljupdate.el --- automatically extracted  
> autoloads\n;;\n;;; Code:\n\n\f\n;; Local Variables:\n;; version- 
> control: never\n;; no-byte-compile: t\n;; no-update-autoloads: t 
> \n;; End:\n;;; ljupdate.el ends here\n" nil "/Users/dr/Aquamacs/ 
> emacs/lisp/ljupdate.el")
>       autoload-ensure-default-file("/Users/dr/Aquamacs/emacs/lisp/ 
> ljupdate.el")
>       update-directory-autoloads("/Users/clynbech/Tools/UPSTREAM/ 
> ljupdate/")
>       apply(update-directory-autoloads "/Users/clynbech/Tools/ 
> UPSTREAM/ljupdate/")
>       batch-update-autoloads()
>       eval((batch-update-autoloads))
>       eval-expression((batch-update-autoloads) nil)
>       call-interactively(eval-expression)