Re: Recent changes to dired.el and info.el

[Luc Teirlinck]

Thien-Thi Nguyen wrote:

   dired.el, info.el, (and i just noticed) mail/rmail.el fail to load
   because the variable `desktop-buffer-mode-handlers' is not defined.
   the scenario occurs when one doesn't load desktop.el ever.

`desktop-buffer-mode-handlers' is defined, even if desktop is never loaded.
That is what autoload cookies are for.  It is defined by loaddefs.el:

(defvar desktop-buffer-mode-handlers nil "\
  ...

If your loaddefs.el does not contain this line, it is out of date.

   > In general, use of eval-after-load should be avoided.

   what is a better way to avoid the error thrown by `add-to-list' (in
   this specific case), then?

`make bootstrap' (maybe with `make maintainer-clean' first, but I do not
believe that is necessary) or else:

$ cd lisp
$ make autoloads EMACS=../src/emacs

I do not get these errors, because my loaddefs.el is up to date.

   the desired behavior is ability to load/use info, dired, rmail, without
   having to load desktop.el.  if i don't use desktop.el, i don't want it
   loaded (or autoloaded), *ever*.

`desktop-buffer-mode-handlers' is a variable.  Autoloading a variable
does not load its file.  The definition in loaddefs.el suffices:

*** Welcome to IELM ***  Type (describe-mode) for help.
ELISP> desktop-buffer-mode-handlers
nil
ELISP> (featurep 'desktop)
nil

I believe that you should revert your changes.

Sincerely,

Luc.