Re: byte-compiling .emacs

[Jay Belanger]

Phillip Lord <p.lord@cs.man.ac.uk> writes:

>>>>>> "Joe" == Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> writes:
>
>   Joe>    On Sun, Apr 10 2005, Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu>
>   Joe>    wrote:
>
>   >> But, note, what you should really do is byte compile the .emacs,
>
>   Joe>    Why?  Typically this isn't worth the trouble ("Changes is my
>   Joe>    .emacs are ignored!!!1 What's wrong???ß").
>
>
>   Joe> OK, I guess I was wrong.  I personally always byte compile mine
>   Joe> b/c otherwise emacs complains that the source file is newer.
>   Joe> Other people might not have that problem :).  But perhaps I'm
>   Joe> the one who should change...
>
> If you don't byte-compile it at all, then it won't. 

And of course remove the .elc file.

> I think that there is an auto recompile package out there somewhere. 
> I never compiled my .emacs or subsidiary files myself. I doubt that it
> makes that much difference. 

It does make a difference for me (but only a few seconds difference),
but I probably have too much junk in it.  At any rate, I moved most of
the junk to subsidiary files, which I do compile (and have to remember
to recompile whenever I change them), and have my (uncompiled) .emacs
do little more than load them.

At any rate, even when I didn't compile, the overhead was a one-time
(per boot) overhead of a few seconds, so not compiling was never
really a problem.

Jay