Odd undefined function after Fedora/Emacs upgrade

Odd undefined function after Fedora/Emacs upgrade

[Dave Goldberg]

This is probably more of an Emacs question than a Gnus question but
it's related enough that I hope someone here can help.

Since upgrading to Fedora 19 I now have a new version of Emacs:

GNU Emacs 24.2.1 (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.8.0)
 of 2013-04-10 on buildvm-11.phx2.fedoraproject.org

and a weird problem.  When I start gnus I get an error that

gnus-get-text-property-excluding-characters-with-faces 

is an undefined function.  I use the latest gnus from git which I keep
in ~/gnus-src and the lisp subdirectory of which is put in my load
path very early on.  I do see that function defined in gnus-util.el
there, and sure enough, if I explicitly load gnus-util before running
gnus everything is fine.  So my workaround has been to explicitly put
(load-library "gnus-util") at the top of my .gnus file.  What I think
has happened here is that Fedora has burned me by building emacs such
that the gnus-util in /usr/share/emacs is loaded on startup (or
perhaps even compiled in).  Sure enough if I run emacs -q and C-h v
features I see gnus-util listed there.  I can live with that - the
explict load-library gives me the behavior I want, but I wonder if
there is a better option, or if this is something that should be
reported as a bug to the Fedora packager?

Thanks,

-- 
Dave Goldberg
david.goldberg6@verizon.net

Re: Odd undefined function after Fedora/Emacs upgrade

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

Dave Goldberg wrote:
> This is probably more of an Emacs question than a Gnus question but
> it's related enough that I hope someone here can help.

> Since upgrading to Fedora 19 I now have a new version of Emacs:

> GNU Emacs 24.2.1 (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.8.0)
>  of 2013-04-10 on buildvm-11.phx2.fedoraproject.org

> and a weird problem.  When I start gnus I get an error that

> gnus-get-text-property-excluding-characters-with-faces

> is an undefined function.  I use the latest gnus from git which I keep
> in ~/gnus-src and the lisp subdirectory of which is put in my load
> path very early on.  I do see that function defined in gnus-util.el
> there, and sure enough, if I explicitly load gnus-util before running
> gnus everything is fine.  So my workaround has been to explicitly put
> (load-library "gnus-util") at the top of my .gnus file.  What I think
> has happened here is that Fedora has burned me by building emacs such
> that the gnus-util in /usr/share/emacs is loaded on startup (or
> perhaps even compiled in).  Sure enough if I run emacs -q and C-h v
> features I see gnus-util listed there.  I can live with that - the
> explict load-library gives me the behavior I want, but I wonder if
> there is a better option, or if this is something that should be
> reported as a bug to the Fedora packager?

> Thanks,

I think it is obviously a bug of Fedora's Emacs.  It blocks people
from using a new ELisp program.  If there was something bad in Gnus
when Fedora people built Emacs 24.2, what they or we should have to
do was to fix Gnus rather than such a workaround (preload gnus-util).