Re: w3m-el-snapshot installation

[Haines Brown]

Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de> writes:

> Hello again,
> Ok, then, I think, running the postinst script of "w3m-el-snapshot" went
> wrong.  You should have become a message starting with 
>
> install/w3m-el-snapshot: ...
>
>
> Could you please run this as a normal user (with no root privileges):
>
> /usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/w3m-el-snapshot emacs23

Michael, yes, the output was indeed interesting:

First, nothing happens

  $ /usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/w3m-el-snapshot emacs23 
  $

If I try without the "emacs23" appended, I get:

  $ /usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/w3m-el-snapshot
  install/w3m-el-snapshot: byte-compiling for , logged in
    /tmp/elc.6XlCZFi50OXr 
  mkdir: cannot create directory `/usr/share//site-lisp/w3m': No such file
    or directory

Given the innards of w3m-el-snapshot, this is what I'd expect, for the
value used to construct the path is null. However, it does show that the
executable script is at least trying. Since the first thing it does is
to create the w3m directory, which doesn't happen, there seems to be a
pothole in the following script:

  ...
  FLAVOR=$1
  ...
  ELCDIR=/usr/share/$FLAVOR/site-lisp/$PKGSNAME
  ...
  if [ ! -d "$ELCDIR" ]; then
    mkdir "$ELCDIR"
    chmod 755 "$ELCDIR"
  fi

I don't know how to debug to see whether in fact $FLAVOR and $PKGSNAME
are created as the script runs. However, I don't see how the value of
$PKGSNAME gets defined, for the line above, which is its first
appearance of this variable in the script, it is used to build the value
of ELCDIR. Is this why the path used to constuct the w3m directory ends
up with a null gap?

However, I'm ignorant about such things and I apologize for the
speculation. In fact, I didn't even know emacs had a packages directory
where packages could be added or removed at will. It's been ten years
since of gave the emacs manual a quick glance. Seems it is time if I
can find it to read the manual again.

Haines Brown