Re: Correct Paths to Emacs C Sources after Installation

[Alexander Shukaev]

Once again. I want to play around with interactive documentation feature of
Emacs, i.e. clicking `C source code' links when searching for some
implementation details. That would be particularly cool for people who like
to hack on Emacs and actually, as I understand it, that's why such
interactive feature was introduced in the first place.

Two cases:

   1. I build and install Emacs for personal usage. Does not even matter on
   what platform Unix-like or Windows. Sources are not installed by default,
   but I believe their either should or at least an option has to be provided
   for that. And

   Vsource_directory
       = Fexpand_file_name (build_string ("../"),
    Fcar (decode_env_path (0, PATH_DUMPLOADSEARCH, 0)));

   refers to a hard coded build directory path. Usually build directories
   are temporary and so after deleting it, one would not be able to browse C
   sources interactively. Furthermore, it is conceptually "stupid" to separate
   sources from built Emacs when, in fact, this built Emacs wants to refer to
   these sources it was built from. I think nobody can deny that it's pretty
   much a convention to distribute open-source project sources under
   ".../src/name" (for potential further usage or reference like we have in
   this case as well).
   2. I build and install Emacs, then I package it and distribute to end
   users. Why on Earth should the path to the build directory (which obviously
   does not exist on end users' machines) that I used be hard coded into
   "Vsource_directory"? And again this leads us to the same argument as in #1.

I thought these reasons were kind of obvious. What do you think of it?