Re: An alternative to a monolithic ~/.emacs init file

[rustom]

On Nov 8, 6:08 pm, Sebastian Tennant <seb...@smolny.plus.com> wrote:
> Quoth rustom <rustompm...@gmail.com>:
>
> > Could you please elaborate on how this works a little?  [...] I really
> > would like to have a tiny little .emacs file and a bunch of files and
> > directories containing unrelated stuff
>
> If you don't care about autoloads (or you're not sure what they are) and
> you just want a small ~/.emacs, then all you need is this:
>
>   ;;; load dotemacs/*.el
>   (mapc (lambda (f) (load f))
>     (split-string
>       (shell-command-to-string "find ~/elisp/dotemacs -name *.el")))
>
> This routine simply loads each file ending '.el' found under the
> directory ~/elisp/dotemacs.
>
> Sebastian

Thanks. I think I understand autoload. Also I dont want needless
loading at emacs-startup -- its unlikely that in a given session I
will do C and python and ruby and org and tramp and elisp and .....
though I do use all these once in a while. What I dont understand are
magic cookies and how emacs uses them; or more correctly *When* emacs
uses them.  The elisp manual says:

>.These comments do nothing on their own, but they serve as a guide for the 
>command `update-file-autoloads',
> which constructs calls to `autoload' and arranges to execute them when Emacs 
> is built.

Does this mean I have to rebuild emacs if I want to use this ?!

Also what I guess is a related question -- What/Where/How is
loaddefs.el? It does not seem to be a fixed single file -- value of
the variable 'generated-autoloaded-file'  because many a package p
comes with its own p-loaddefs.el.  But then if loaddefs.el is not a
single file but a general class of files we are back to the same
problem that autoload sets out to solve namely:
 -- if emacs does not know about feature x it does not know what to do
 -- if emacs knows about x it does not need to have anything to do

In short I can (I think!) understand elisp code (been writing some for
15 odd years)
What I am unable to understand is what happens at what binding time:
1. emacs development time
2. emacs (re)build time
3. emacs start time
4. feature (first) reference time