[Refdb-devel] refdb-elisp problems

[Markus H. <mar...@mh...>]

Hi,

David Nebauer writes:
 > My problem is that, even though it appears to install correctly, it is 
 > not available in emacs.
 > 
 > Neither mode becomes active when I open an xml or ris file.  Neither is 
 > refdb-mode available to start manually as per the manual.
 > 

I can't reproduce this here. I've deleted a previously installed
package, then fetched the latest .deb (using apt-get mysteriously
failed - maybe I'm no enough of a Debian guy) and installed it using
dpkg. After doing that, both refdb-mode and ris-mode are
available. RefDB Mode is available as a menu entry in the Tools
menu. I've repeated the test after starting Emacs with the -q switch -
this bypasses my ~/.emacs to make sure I don't use any private
settings to magically load either of the modes. It still works ok.

 > While compiling refdb-set-default-database in file 
 > /home/david/data/computing/projects/refdb/packages/elisp/pkg/debianise/source/refdb-elisp-1.3/elc.20477/refdb-mode.el:
 >   ** assignment to free variable refdb-database-default
 >   ** reference to free variable refdb-database-default

These messages appear to be harmless. I also see them on my system,
and I see them if I build other Emacs extensions from the sources.

[...first run...]
 > Loading 50refdb-elisp (source)...
 > Error while loading 50refdb-elisp

[...second run...]
 > Loading 50refdb-elisp (source)...

[...]
 > There is clearly a problem loading refdb-elisp.  I see two files were 
 > written immediately after the load error, so here they are as well in 
 > case they provide a hint:
 > 

If I understand correctly, the two installation runs create
installations for Emacs in general (undefined version) as well as for
specifically installed versions. During the first run, loading
50refdb-elisp most likely fails because refdb-mode is not yet
installed completely (the file contains a "require 'refdb-mode"
call). It is sort of a bootstrapping problem which could only be
avoided by manually specifying the order in which the files are
installed. I don't know whether this is possible within a .deb
package. In any case, after the second successful run everything works
ok on my Debian box.

Could you or Justus try the following command in emacs:

Alt-x load-file RETURN /etc/refdb-mode-config.el RETURN

and see whether refdb-mode and ris-mode are available after that?

regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Hoenicka
mar...@ca...
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