bug#48108: Wishlist: Command to remove redundant eln cache directories [native-comp]

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Juanma Barranquero <lekktu@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2022 09:39:14 +0100
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>, 
>       Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> 
> `native-compile-prune-cache' does not remove the preloaded/ subdir (or its 
> contents) of the native-lisp/
> directories, and consequently does not remove the directories themselves.
> 
> For example, after running it I still have *.eln files in the following 
> directories (comp-native-version-dir =
> "29.0.50-c0f9fe8e"):
> 
> ~/.emacs.d/.eln-cache/29.0.50-c0f9fe8e
> D:\Devel\emacs\repo\trunk\native-lisp\29.0.50-57ea32b2\preloaded
> D:\Devel\emacs\repo\trunk\native-lisp\29.0.50-7c1dd663\preloaded
> D:\Devel\emacs\repo\trunk\native-lisp\29.0.50-a22e1c10\preloaded
> D:\Devel\emacs\repo\trunk\native-lisp\29.0.50-c0f9fe8e\preloaded
> 
> which means the command deleted the stale cache in ~/.emacs.d/, but not the 
> ones in the source tree.
> 
> Is that intended?

AFAIR, yes.  The command is intended to help users to clean up the eln-cache
of files _they_ compile, but it isn't supposed to touch *.eln files
installed as part of Emacs.  That's for sysadmins.  And besides, on many
systems the preloaded *.eln files are not writable by "normal" users.

See bug#48108, where this was discussed.