Re: error building poke-mode.elc

[Jose E. Marchesi]

>> Building the current master branch on a system with Emacs 24.5.1,
>> I get this error:
>>
>> ========================================================================
>> make[2]: Entering directory '/media/develdata/devel/POKE/poke/etc'
>> if test 'emacs' != no; then \
>>   am__dir=. am__subdir_includes=''; \
>>   case poke-mode.elc in */*) \
>>     am__dir=`echo 'poke-mode.elc' | sed 's,/[^/]*$,,'`; \
>>     am__subdir_includes="-L $am__dir -L ./$am__dir"; \
>>   esac; \
>>   test -d "$am__dir" || /arch/local/x86_64-linux/bin/mkdir -p "$am__dir" || 
>> exit 1; \
>>   emacs --batch \
>>       \
>>     $am__subdir_includes -L . -L . \
>>     --eval '(if (boundp (quote byte-compile-dest-file-function)) (setq 
>> byte-compile-dest-file-function (lambda (_) "poke-mode.elc")) (defun 
>> byte-compile-dest-file (_) "poke-mode.elc") )' \
>>     -f batch-byte-compile 'poke-mode.el'; \
>> else :; fi
>> Loading 00debian-vars...
>> Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50autoconf.el (source)...
>> Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50cmake-data.el (source)...
>> Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dictionaries-common.el (source)...
>> Loading debian-ispell...
>> Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-default.el (source)...
>> Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-dicts.el (source)...
>> Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50gnugo.el (source)...
>> Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50python-docutils.el (source)...
>>
>> In toplevel form:
>> poke-mode.el:169:1:Error: rx form `regexp' requires args satisfying `stringp'
>> make[2]: *** [Makefile:2022: poke-mode.elc] Error 1
>> ========================================================================
>>
>> Since Emacs is now a build prerequisite, it should be mentioned in the
>> third section of the DEPENDENCIES file.
>
> Emacs is not a strict dependency.  From the Automake manual:
>
>    Automake will byte-compile all Emacs Lisp source files using the
>    Emacs found by ‘AM_PATH_LISPDIR’, if any was found.
>
> If no Emacs is found in the build system, AM_PATH_LISPDIR will set
> lispdir to a default and Automake will not try to byte-compile the .el
> files.
>
> Now, _if_ Emacs is installed, then clearly the modes are requiring a
> recent enough version of Emacs.  This is annoying.
>
> I see two alternatives:
>
> a) We change dist_lisp_LISP to dist_lisp_DATA so Automake will never try
>    to byte-compile the elisp files.
>
> b) We document a minimum version of Emacs in DEPENDENCIES.

I just went with a) in both master and maint/poke-1.

On one side these modes, as they mature, will probably have to go to
their own repos/subprojects anyway and made available via ELPA.

On the other side, we have more pressing issues now than trying to get
the modes work with a wide range of Emacsen.

Thanks for reporting!