Re: emacs.pdmp not always rebuilt

[Gregory Heytings]

> But what is the underlying problem?

It's obviously that the Elisp substitute-command-keys is not defined 
during the first steps of loadup.

> Is it perhaps that substitute-command-keys is defined in help.el, and 
> help.el is loaded by loadup only after simple.el?  If so, I think there 
> could be a better solution to this: either change the order of loading,

No, because that would require to load help.el before all other files 
(e.g. the error could happen in subr.el), and actually even before itself 
(because the error could also happen inside help.el).

> or simply test if substitute-command-keys is fboundp, and avoid using it 
> if not.

That would be another option, yes.  I don't think it's much better though, 
as Stefan K said a few hours ago the potential effect on 
substitute-command-keys on error messages during the build is minor.