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From: ram-ashwin@YALE.ARPA (Ashwin Ram)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Loading files if not already loaded...
Message-ID: <8708201300.AA17564@ATHENA.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date: Thu, 20-Aug-87 09:00:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: ATHENA.8708201300.AA17564
Posted: Thu Aug 20 09:00:53 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 10:01:57 EDT
Sender: daemon@eddie.MIT.EDU
Lines: 37


You're right, I didn't state my point clearly.  What I was trying to get at
was this.  Suppose my "wonderful-function" used a set of other wonderful
functions that were part of a package.  For example, suppose I wrote an
rmail-like package that used a bunch of rmail functions, plus defined some
new ones.  Now, it would be nice if my package could just require the
original rmail file, rather than autoloading each of these functions from
that rmail file.  If the rmail file doesn't provide a feature (I know rmail
does, but many files don't), this is hard to do.  You can either autoload
each individual function you need (a pain), or you have to load the file (and
have it reloaded again if you need this file for another package too).

One simple solution would be to make each file automatically provide the name
of the file itself as one of the features it provides (in addition to
explicit provides in the file).  Then you can easily require the file using
existing require/provide mechanisms (which by the way I think are really
neat).

A related point:  I think:

        (if (not (fboundp 'wonderful-function))
            (require "wonderful-feature")) ; with optional wonderful-file

is a cleaner way to do autoloads than:

        (if (not (fboundp 'wonderful-function))
            (load "wonderful-file"))

Since require's filename defaults to the feature name, the former is strictly
more powerful than the latter.  This gives you a way to do package
dependencies in a slightly nicer way than autoload does.

-- Ashwin.

ARPA:    Ram-Ashwin@cs.yale.edu
UUCP:    {decvax,linus,seismo}!yale!Ram-Ashwin
BITNET:  Ram@yalecs