Re: Install C source code for for debugging help

[Stefan Monnier]

>> It's all very well to say that the user can change the
>> source-directory variable to some random location and then download
>> a correct copy of the right version of the Emacs source to that
>> location, but that can be a tricky thing to do correctly
>
> Can you explain in more detail why is this tricky?  AFAIR, Emacs
> prompts for the directory in this case, and all the user needs to do
> is type its file name at the prompt.

There is no valid answer to this prompt, because those source files
simply aren't installed on the machine (at least for 99.99% of the
users, I expect).

I never considered doping what Paul suggests, because I expected the
amount of space wasted this way is too large.  But admittedly, once
compressed with something like lzip the C source files take up less
than 3MB, so it's really not that bad given the size of the `emacs`
executable, plus the .pdmp file and all the .elcs.

In the case of Debian, it would make sense to include those compressed-C
files in the `emacs-el` package (the optional package that provides the
(compressed) .el files, since a normal install of the `emacs` package
only installs the .elc files) which currently weighs in at around 16MB.

Arguably, this is something that Debian/RedHat should be doing on their
side, but maybe Paul's patch is an easier way to convince "all" distros
to do that, rather than lobbying them one by one.


        Stefan