Re: How global is a define-global-minor-mode mode?

[Chong Yidong]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     >     Not really: if the global minor mode is autoloaded, then :require is
>     >     a nuisance,
>
>     > I don't follow.  Could you explain why it is a nuisance?
>
>     The :require thingy is a risk: if you move the definition of the mode to
>     another file, then the user's customizations will be broken (it happened
>     with global-font-lock-mode).
>
> It seems that you are saying the risk is that the :require has to
> specify the file name, so if you move the definition to another file,
> the :require argument will be wrong.
>
> If the :require is generated automatically, perhaps it would never be
> wrong.

The only way for Emacs to know which source file to :require, for a
third-party package, is to look at the custom-set-variables
declaration in .emacs.  Therefore, the only way your suggestion can
work is for define-global-minor-mode to somehow put this information
in .emacs.  If you move the source file to a different location there
is no way for .emacs to be automatically updated.

So there's no sane way to handle this automagically.