where to define-minor-mode line-number-mode

[Stefan Monnier]

I'd like to define line-number-mode, column-number-mode and
transient-mark-mode using define-minor-mode so as to make them
more consistent with other minor modes.

I tried to do it the naive way and failed miserably: those modes
are defined in simple.el and simple.el is loaded by loadup.el
before loaddefs.el, i.e. define-minor-mode is not yet autoloaded.
Worse yet, simple.el is loaded before files.el so even if I load
easy-mmode.el I can't use define-minor-mode because it uses
file-name-sans-extension which is defined in files.el.

Of course, I can just keep those modes as is and simply add the
relevant code to make them behave "as if defined with define-minor-mode",
but I'd rather not have to do that.

Any idea what I can do ?
Should I define them in some other file than simple.el ?
If so which one ?


        Stefan