bug#32266: Cannot add directory names ending in .el with normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path

[Håkon Hægland]

I am trying to use the package "f" which has prerequisites the packages

"s" and  "dash". I wanted to load "f.el" with "use-package", so I downloaded

the four packages with git into a custom folder:

~/.emacs.d/installed-from-github/

I recognized that after cloning with git the folder names of the first

three packages became dash.el, s.el, and f.el. Note that each folder

name contains a dot. But according to the documentation of

normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path it should work for

these type of directory names. Also refer to the source of

normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path at

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/startup.el#n445

However, when I try to run emacs with the

following init file: 

(setq debug-on-error t)

(let ((default-directory  "~/.emacs.d/installed-from-github/"))

  (normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path))

(message "%S" load-path)

(require 'use-package)

(use-package dash

  :demand)

(use-package s

  :demand)

(use-package f

  :demand)

I get the following error:

Error (use-package): Cannot load dash

and when I inspect the *Messages* buffer I can see that load-path does

not contain any of "/home/hakon/.emacs.d/installed-from-github/dash.el",

"/home/hakon/.emacs.d/installed-from-github/s.el", or

"/home/hakon/.emacs.d/installed-from-github/f.el". 

Also, when I look at line #474 of the source

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/startup.el#n474

I see the following predicate for including a directory:

(not (string-match "\\.elc?\\'" file))

I wonder if this can be a bug? At least I think it should be documented in the

doc string of the function that it will not include directories ending

with .el or .elc and the reason why.

-------------------------

In GNU Emacs 25.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.22.30)

 of 2018-04-28 built on hakon-Vostro-5568

Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11906000

System Description: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Configured using:

 'configure CFLAGS=-no-pie --with-xft --prefix=/opt/emacs-25.3'

Configured features:

XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG IMAGEMAGICK SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS NOTIFY

ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB

TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11

Important settings:

  value of $LC_MONETARY: nb_NO.UTF-8

  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nb_NO.UTF-8

  value of $LC_TIME: nb_NO.UTF-8

  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8

  value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=ibus

  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

----------------------

Best regards

Håkon Hægland