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magit / transient

Transient commands
https://magit.vc/manual/transient
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Autoloading `transient-define-prefix` form fails #280

Closed alphapapa closed 5 months ago

alphapapa commented 7 months ago

Hi Jonas,

This seems to be the issue described in https://github.com/magit/transient/issues/254.

Please see this code in my listen package:

https://github.com/alphapapa/listen.el/blob/5abe25ff1678ffa694f7b062ca748ac143af47a1/listen.el#L331-L344

I explicitly (require 'transient), and I do:

;;;###autoload
(transient-define-prefix listen-menu () ...

But when I start Emacs, I get this error:

Error loading autoloads: (void-function transient-prefix)

Frustratingly, that error doesn't point to the source of the error. But I've narrowed it down to the autoloads for listen, as (featurep 'listen-autoloads) returns nil, and the functions autoloaded in listen-autoloads.el after this line are not defined:

(put 'listen-menu 'transient--prefix (transient-prefix :command 'listen-menu :info-manual "(listen)" :refresh-suffixes t))

If I manually M-x load-library RET listen-autoloads RET, then the rest of the file gets loaded and the functions are defined.

I don't understand how I could be the first (or even second) to encounter this problem, and I don't know how to fix it. By preventing my package's autoloads from loading completely, it's breaking some important functionality in the package.

I'd appreciate any help. Thanks.

tarsius commented 7 months ago 
;;;###autoload
(transient-define-prefix listen-menu () ...

Unfortunately that doesn't just work for arbitrary "defun" macros. Emacs has to be taught about each one individually, and that has to be done by editing Emacs. :frowning_face:

For these macros I did it a month ago in https://github.com/emacsmirror/emacs/commit/167d9b9040333a5bff64325423750243c60edfa1. In other words, until your package stops supporting Emacs versions that are currently released, you have to use this instead:

;;;###autoload (autoload 'listen-menu "listen" nil t)
(transient-define-prefix listen-menu () ...

Unfortunately that isn't just more verbose, it also means that the autoload will lack the docstring.

Also see https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2024-03/msg00015.html.

alphapapa commented 7 months ago

Thanks. I released that fix in v0.9 of Listen.

For my sake, this issue can be closed, but would it be worth mentioning in some "known issues" list?

tarsius commented 7 months ago

I'll leave it open until I get around to documenting this.