Re: [O] missing autoloads / (void-variable org-version)

[Detlef Steuer]

> Since my Makefile branch was merged I've been getting flak for breaking
> certain setups.  Now, the change didn't actually break them, but I did
> make (perhaps foolishly) a deliberate decision to make that particular
> breakage fatal rather than silent.  It would be very easy to continue to
> paper over the breakage and pretend things are working when they're not.
> What irritates me greatly is that quite a few of the people that insist
> on this "solution" are the ones who would have to deal with the
> Heisenbugs thus introduced.  So let me explain once more what is broken:
> 

Hmm. I was biten by the makefile change but hopefully my report didn't
count as "flak". 

I have absolutely no problem with any reasonable change in the makefile.
But your description of the situation before and after the makefile
change is not entirely correct.  
Before: May be I had a broken setup and didn't know. Nevertheless it
worked. 
After: May be conceptually your new makefile improved the build
process. But now my setup was broken. ;-)

And here comes the moment when you just wanted to do some routine work,
namely publish some notes for the upcoming lecture, normally a one
minute job, well set-up and tested. And all you get is some error. Time
is ticking away, next org-mode scheduled APPT in 5 min. We all know
this.  

My guess: It was too easy to miss that action was required on a user's
side. May be a hint that make targets changed and that under some
circumstances make update could fail and a hint with some exclamation
marks that batch exporting now requires --load org-install.el and not
only --load org.el would have reduced mail traffic a lot. If there was
such a note at least I missed it. 

Definitely keep up your work and improve the build process! I'm happy
to change my scripts if I know I need to and better still if I
understand why I should!  (Thx for your explanation!)

Detlef