Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!gateway!odi.COM!benson
From: benson@odi.COM ("Benson I. Margulies")
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: runtime hook
Message-ID: <8905181131.AA28122@indirect.odi.com>
Date: 18 May 89 11:31:51 GMT
References: <8905171912.AA06544@dsys.icst.nbs.gov>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
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    ? From: odi!benson@uunet.uu.net  (Benson Margulies)

    ? Is there a hook (18.53-wise) that can be set in site-init.el to cause a function
    ? to run when emacs is started up?

    Yes. It's called `load'. Let me explain. When you build emacs, you compile
    all the .c files and link them all together to build `temacs'. The
    Makefile then executes `temacs -l loadup.el dump'. Scanning the source
    of lisp/loadup.el reveals that it loads several packages, including
    site-init.el. When loading a file, all the lisp forms are executed as
    if they were typed (more or less). Say you wanted to preload dired.el
    into your dumped emacs. You can just put the form `(load "dired")' into
    site-init.el in the lisp directory. There is also a `site-load.el' that
    gets loaded in a different place; I am not quite sure what the real
    distinction is. There is also a convention on how the doc strings are
    loaded; see loadup or loaddefs for details.

OK, this part I get. However, we want to keep everyone's emacs up to
date without the need to rebuild the emacs each time some package
changes. So I wanted a hook to run at individual emacs start-up time
to load up any patches that are defined to hold the fort until the next build.

--benson