Re: Babel related bug in elpa version 20121231

[Robert Horn <rjhorn@alum.mit.edu>]

Achim Gratz <Stromeko@nexgo.de> writes:

> Robert Horn writes:
>> I'm experimenting with starterkit on a new machine and have run into a
>> bug in org-mode elpa version 20121231.
>
> Using two systems that hook into Emacs' startup sequence simultaneously
> is asking for trouble.  It may be solveable by carefully orchestrating
> which step gets done when, but in the long run this doesn't seem
> manageable to me.

I got things working by replacing the emacs lisp/org directory with a
link to my git controlled org/lisp directory.  I should eventually
replace this with a setup using the makefiles to install updated
versions of org.  Other experiments confirm that the combination of
starterkit's automagic updating with elpa leads to problems at least for
org-mode.  For account and protections convenience it is easier to use
the link rather than the makefiles until I've got the new system all
properly configured.

Starterkit does have code that looked correct and proper for
coordinating the init with elpa, and I think that for packages not
used by org-mode it will be OK.  But, the automagic startup executes the
lisp code using babel from org files.  This means that org and it's
dependencies are partially loaded before elpa is initialized.  This
means problems for org and any other dependent packages.  

I think the long term solution will have to be abandoning the automagic
startup.  If there were a "compile and install" operation in starterkit
to take the org files and use babel to convert them into elc, it would
be a little bit less magic for the novice user, but it would eliminate
this interaction between it and elpa.  I do expect novice users to use
the package mechanism, so they will run into this problem if they want a
more recent version of org-mode than is packaged with their emacs.

For now it's working for me.  I don't know what direction the maintainer
of starterkit will feel like taking.

R Horn
rjhorn@alum.mit.edu