bug#7989: 23.2.91; How do I update "local" autoloads?

[Reuben Thomas]

It just occurred to me that I should be able to generate autoloads for
my per-user site-lisp files. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in either
the Emacs or Elisp manual that I can see on how to do this, and the
behavior of Emacs is confusing.

I store my per-user Elisp files in ~/local/share/emacs/site-lisp, which
is of course on my load-path.

After browsing about the system a little, the obvious thing seemed to be
to run update-directory-autoloads on this directory. This indeed
collected all the autoloads from this directory, but did two quite
surprising things:

1. It updated all the autoloads, not just the ones for that directory.
This seems to contradict the docstring for update-directory-autoloads,
which says “Update loaddefs.el with all the current autoloads from
DIRS”, and I had supplied precisely one directory, interactively.

2. It then wrote the resulting loaddefs.el to the source directory for
Emacs. This is very clear in the code, in autoload-generated-file, but
I’m at a loss to explain it: I can see this is useful while building
Emacs, but I can’t see what possible utility it has when using an
installed Emacs.

Then, there is very little documentation in the Emacs manual. There’s a
bit more detail in the Elisp manual, but I still can’t find anything
there about the default loaddefs.el, nor can I find how to change where
update-directory-autoloads writes its results, nor in any case where
loaddefs.el files are searched for.

By examining the layout of the ELPA files in my ~/.emacs.d directory, I
can see that it manages to write loaddefs files with different names,
one to each downloaded package’s directory, which are presumably loaded
when I start Emacs, so undoubtedly, there is a way to achieve everything
I want, but I just can’t easily find out how (presumably, reading
package.el would be a good next step).

However, surely it ought to be easier than this for a user simply to
generate loaddefs.el files for their own files?

Apologies if I’ve missed something obvious; if I haven’t, then I’d be
very happy, given an explanation of what I’m supposed to do, to write
patches for the Emacs manual and/or relevant docstrings.


In GNU Emacs 23.2.91.4 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.22.0)
 of 2011-01-13 on canta
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10900000
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_GB.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Emacs-Lisp

Minor modes in effect:
  recentf-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  savehist-mode: t
  minibuffer-electric-default-mode: t
  iswitchb-mode: t
  icomplete-mode: t
  global-whitespace-mode: t
  global-auto-revert-mode: t
  desktop-save-mode: t
  yas/global-mode: t
  yas/minor-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  column-number-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-s d i r e c t o r y C-a C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-s g e n e r a t e d - f i l e C-a <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <up> <up> 
<right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> 
<right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> 
<up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> 
<up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> 
<up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> 
<up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> 
<up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> 
<up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> 
<up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> <up> 
<up> <up> <up> <down> C-a M-x r e p o r t C-g M-x r 
e p o r t b u g <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> 
- e m a c s - b u g <return>

Recent messages:
Wrote /home/rrt/repo/emacs-23/lisp/loaddefs.el
Mark set [2 times]
Mark saved where search started
Quit
Type C-x 1 to remove help window.  
Mark saved where search started [3 times]
call-interactively: End of buffer [2 times]
Quit [2 times]
Mark saved where search started [3 times]
Quit

Load-path shadows:
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/ruby-mode-1.1/ruby-mode hides 
/usr/share/emacs-snapshot/site-lisp/ruby1.8-elisp/ruby-mode
/home/rrt/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/popup hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auto-complete/popup
/home/rrt/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/fuzzy hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auto-complete/fuzzy
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/css-mode-1.0/css-mode hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/css-mode/css-mode
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/link hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/link
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/connection hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/connection
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/dictionary-init hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/dictionary-init
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/dictionary hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/dictionary
/home/rrt/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/dict hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/emacs-goodies-el/dict
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/css-mode-1.0/css-mode hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/lisp/textmodes/css-mode
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/ruby-mode-1.1/ruby-mode hides 
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/lisp/progmodes/ruby-mode
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/css-mode-1.0/css-mode hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/css-mode/css-mode
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/context-en hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-en
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/latex hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/latex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/lpath hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/lpath
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-buf hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-buf
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/context hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/font-latex hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/font-latex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style hides 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style

Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr message sendmail ecomplete rfc822 mml mml-sec
password-cache mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mailcap mail-parse rfc2231
rfc2047 rfc2045 qp ietf-drums mailabbrev nnheader gnus-util netrc
mm-util mail-prsvr gmm-utils mailheader canlock hashcash mail-utils
emacsbug apropos conf-mode newcomment pp multi-isearch jka-compr
find-func help-mode view tabify edebug noutline outline time-date vc-bzr
sha1 hex-util autoload dired longlines vc-git face-remap filladapt
flyspell completing-help recentf tree-widget wid-edit uniquify paren
savehist minibuf-eldef iswitchb icomplete whitespace autorevert time
cus-start cus-load desktop server php-mode etags cc-langs cc-mode
cc-fonts cc-menus cc-cmds cc-styles cc-align cc-engine cc-vars cc-defs
speedbar sb-image ezimage dframe lua-mode regexp-opt comint ring
ropemacs pymacs smart-quotes ffap ispell etags-update
auto-dictionary-autoloads css-mode-autoloads dictionary-autoloads
diff-git-autoloads dired-isearch-autoloads full-ack-autoloads
guess-style-autoloads js2-mode-autoloads kill-ring-search-autoloads
lambdacalc-autoloads magit-autoloads mv-shell-autoloads
ruby-mode-autoloads tumble-autoloads http-post-simple-autoloads package
reporter advice advice-preload yasnippet help-fns derived edmacro kmacro
easymenu assoc cl cl-19 muse-autoloads emacs-goodies-el
emacs-goodies-custom emacs-goodies-loaddefs easy-mmode bbdb-autoloads
preview-latex tex-site auto-loads tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks
lisp-float-type mwheel x-win x-dnd font-setting tool-bar dnd fontset
image fringe lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select
scroll-bar mldrag mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core
frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai
tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european
ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help
simple abbrev loaddefs button minibuffer faces cus-face files
text-properties overlay md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom
widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process dbusbind
system-font-setting font-render-setting gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty emacs)

-- 
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