Re: compile-defun of function in package.el has no effect

[Stefan Monnier]

> then executed M-x compile-defun on it.

How did you end up deciding to do that?
Hmm... I see it's mentioned in lispref/compile.texi.

It probably requires some updates since eval-defun has seen various
changes over the years, but compile-defun hasn't, even though it does
pretty much the same thing.

> There were no complaints, but when I tried again to install the package, my 
> edit did not appear i.e.: instead of "Install the package 'elpy'?" I got the 
> old version 'Install package 'elpy'?

If you edited the file in a fresh new Emacs, then used compile-defun and
then tried M-x package-install, it's possible that package.el was not
yet loaded when you did the compile-defun, so it got loaded when you
tried to package-install, and that undid the effect of compile-defun
(loading from the package.elc file rather than the changed package.el).

> BTW, the error I'm getting when trying to install elpy is 'package
> emacs-24.1 is unavailable'.  I'm running v 24.3.

There's something really wrong here, then.  Have you tried with an empty .emacs?


        Stefan