bug#64901: 29.1; use-package fails to require bind-key at runtime in compiled files

[Basil L. Contovounesios]

Eli Zaretskii [2023-07-28 09:56 +0300] wrote:

>> Cc: 64901@debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 20:12:16 +0300
>> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
>> 
>> > Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 12:03:10 -0500
>> > Cc: 64901@debbugs.gnu.org
>> > From: David Fiander <david@fiander.info>
>> > 
>> > How very odd. I'm running on a pretty much vanilla 29.1RC build, and 
>> > have confirmed this on both my main FreeBSD 13.2 machine and on Ubuntu 
>> > LTS 22.04. Loading the source file works, but loading the complied file 
>> > doesn't.
>> 
>> Sorry, my bad.  If I try loading a byte-compiled file, then yes, I see
>> the error.
>
> John, can you help me out here: why is the byte-compiled file in the
> OP's recipe fail to load?

I'm not John, but macroexpanding the use-package call (specifically the
subexpression that calls the autoloaded bind-keys macro) reveals that it
indeed refers to the bind-key.el variable personal-keybindings.

My guess is that bind-key.el is loaded as expected for the autoloaded
macro call during interpretation/compilation, but once macroexpanded,
there is nothing left to load bind-key.el at runtime.

So (require 'bind-key) is currently needed for byte-compiling such
use-package keywords.

HTH,
-- 
Basil