[Success ?] XEmacs 21.0b46 and a new beta tester ...

Hi Folks ! Okay, today I had the chance of rolling the ball and give the latest beta a try. Before anyone barfs at me: yes, this was my first try to build a beta, but I have been happily compiling non-betas since 19.12. So, first Installation: uname -a: SunOS noblues.coling.uni-freiburg.de 5.6 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-1 ./configure 'sparc-sun-solaris2.6' '--cflags=-O6' '--prefix=/home/schauer/misc' '--with-dialogs=lucid' '--site-includes=/home/schauer/misc/include' '--site-libraries=/home/schauer/misc/lib' '--with-jpeg' XEmacs 21.0 "Toggenburg" configured for `sparc-sun-solaris2.6'. Where should the build process find the source code? /home/schauer/misc/src/packages/xemacs/xemacs-21.0-b46 What installation prefix should install use? /home/schauer/misc What operating system and machine description files should XEmacs use? `s/sol2.h' and `m/sparc.h' What compiler should XEmacs be built with? gcc -O6 Should XEmacs use the GNU version of malloc? yes Should XEmacs use the relocating allocator for buffers? yes What window system should XEmacs use? x11 Where do we find X Windows header files? /usr/dt/include /usr/openwin/include Where do we find X Windows libraries? /usr/dt/lib /usr/openwin/lib Additional header files: /home/schauer/misc/include Additional libraries: /home/schauer/misc/lib Runtime library search path: /usr/dt/lib:/usr/openwin/lib Compiling in support for XAUTH. Compiling in support for XPM images. Compiling in support for X-Face message headers. Compiling in support for JPEG image conversion. Compiling in native sound support. Compiling in support for GNU DBM. Compiling in support for CDE. Compiling in support for ToolTalk. Compiling in EXPERIMENTAL support for Drag'n'Drop ( CDE ). Compiling in support for proper session-management. Using Lucid menubars. Using Lucid scrollbars. Using Motif dialog boxes. Compiling in DLL support. movemail will use "dot-locking" for locking mail spool files. So far, so good. Oh, one minor: although I used --with-dialogs=lucid, configure opted for Motif dialog boxes. The first problem I encountered was that I haven't read the etc/BETA not carefully enough, and was bitten when I just issued 'make'. Make (correctly) complained that it couldn't find makeinfo and just stopped. I then searched the Makefile a little to discover that 'make beta' wouldn't try to build with info-files. But anyway, what about some switch --with-info ? Next step: test src/xemacs. Works, but the icons (i.e. the toolbar looks really worse) since the background won't match the frame appearance anymore. Okay, been here, done that. 'make install' - same procedure as last year, james, no info files, no install. Okay, copied the files/directories by hand. Well, and now for the big problem: I don't understand the package system. Point. Anybody want to give me a hand ? Okay, what did I do ? I installed everything from 21.0/packages/binary-packages that looked useful to me (to bad there is no Sumo-tar-ball yet). My .emacs [1] now loads nearly correctly (even without my understanding ;-) up to just following minor glitches: (1) `read-kbd-macro' requires an explicit (require 'edmacro) which it didn't before. (2) In mail-abbrevs.el I found the following comment: ";; - Add an autoload of define-mail-alias to loaddefs.el." This hasn't happend yet, obviously. Perhaps the comment should also apply to `read-kbd-macro' ? (3) #'vm and #'gnus neither seem to be defined there, i.e. I have to load(-library, of course) vm and gnus by hand (haven't checked require up to now. (I somewhere remember somebody asking why vm needs to be dumped - wait a minute, need I install all packages in advance before building XEmacs ? Naa, that can not be true) (4) ilisp just eats up allegro cl. This is, it failed (I once get an error about an undefined symbol 'turn-on-fast-lock', which I haven't used in my .emacs) but stays quiet. Another M-x allegro just does nothing. No hang, no error, no message, just nothing. After that I wanted to make sure, that I haven't overlooked anything stupid and check the info files. Hmm, no "dir"-File installed. Info-auto-generate-directory has value 'if-missing, but won't do anything. Copied the file from the source tree. Okay, now info works, but of course the package-info-files are not shown. Thanks for reading all this and sending me "hey, start looking at <there>, before you proove yourself to be entirely stupid." [1] My .emacs is not trivial, but not awfully overloaded either. A lot of package configurations (AucTeX, prolog, ilisp, calendar, Gnu and XEmacs versions with different major/minors, sigh ...) separated on a bunch of files. One final note: I believe that 21.0 needs a LOT of documentation, especially on the package stuff. Yes, I found etc/PACKAGES. But this explains absolutely nothing. Especially new XEmacs users will never know what they need or don't need. And if some packages need to be available before compiling XEmacs, please state that LOUD and CLEAR in the INSTALL file (or at least in the etc/BETA file [2]). Holger [2] I can imagine that all this package stuff has been explained and discussed all over. Fine. But I cannot read the whole beta-ml archive just to find out what I have to do in order to get a working XEmacs (instead a clear instruction is all I need). -- --- http://www.coling.uni-freiburg.de/~schauer --- Why people hate using Lisp: "Are people suffering from parenthophobia-by-proxy, mistaking `parens' for `parents'?" - Erik Naggum in comp.emacs.xemacs