Re: Load path and custom compiling cvs on Debian

[Tim X]

Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> writes:

> On 2007-12-17 10:05 +0100, Tim X wrote:
>
>> There are a number of things you need to do to get a CVS build of emacs
>> work with debian managed elisp packages. The debian version of emacs 22 is
>> modified to handle this and you will need to do the same sort of
>> modifications to make this work with your CVS version. 
>>
>> The best way to do this is grep the files in the lisp directory of the
>> debian version of emacs 22 for the string 'debian' (make it case
>> insensitive). 
>
> Not really.  The best way to do this is to download and unpack the
> Debian emacs22 source package, e.g. with "apt-get source emacs22".
> There you can find all the patches in the debian/patches subdirectory.

True. however, that will give you all the patches and not just the stuff
relating to paths and loading debianised el packages. To what extent that
is an issue depends on what you want to do (and maybe how easily you can
grok the patches).

>
>> I can't remember all the files that are modified, but it does include
>> startup.el and I think paths.el and possibly some others. 
>>
>> You will also need to make the site-lisp of the installed CVS version
>> (i.e. probably /usr/local/share/emacs/23.x/site-lisp a symbolic link to
>> /usr/share/emacs22/site-lisp.
>
> Could you elaborate on that?  The Debian packaged Emacsen look for site-lisp
> directories both under /usr/share and under /usr/local/share.
>

When you install emacs, it puts some files/dirs under
<prefix>/emacs/<version>, such as a site-lisp dir. The debian emacs 22 puts
this under /usr/share/emacs/22.1 and CVS will put this uner
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.x. The debian emacs22 site-lisp is a symbolic
link to /usr/share/emacs22/site-lisp. To ensure you get this directory, you
can remove the site-lisp created in the CVS install and replace it with a
symbolic link to /usr/share/emacs22/site-lisp or
/usr/share/emacs/22.1/site-lisp.

>> Note also that when emacs is built, aI think it dumps an image of itself to
>> speedup startup. This means you cannot just modify startup.el and have it
>> work. You need to modify it and then build emacs. 
>
> Correct.
>
>> At one stage there were some emacs22 snapshot packages being done - maybe
>> google to see if you can find someone else who has done all the hard work
>
> Snapshots of the Emacs trunk are still built weekly by Romain Francoise,
> see http://emacs.orebokech.com/.  That's probably the best starting
> point for building a debianized unicode-2 Emacs.
>

Agreed. These are the packages I used at one stage. However, I did run into
some problems with these packages and others I have installed from
sources.Romain and I tried to work out what the problem was, but never
did. The problem did not exist with my own CVS build and the type of mods
I've outlined above. However, Romain does an excellent job and my comment
is not a criticism - for those starting out wanting the latest CVS snapshot
and full Debian integration, I recommend his packages. The problem I
encountered is something weird relating to the large specialised package I
need to use, which for some reason triggers some bug when I use his
package, but not when I use the official Debian emacs 22 or my own CVS version.

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au