Steve Youngs <sryoungs@bigpond.net.au> writes:

> For reasons that I'm not sure of, when you start XEmacs like that
> you won't get the package directories under $HOME/.xemacs in your
> load-path.
>
> Try again, loading XEmacs normally.

Same result.

> That's Cygwin for ya.

Maybe 'file' is available in some package that I don't have
installed.

>  $ xemacs -debug-paths -kill > ~/xemacs-full-paths.out 2>&1
>
> Whatever paths that XEmacs knows about on a normal start up will be in
> ~/xemacs-full-paths.out.
>
>  $ xemacs -q -debug-paths -kill > ~/xemacs-q-paths.out 2>&1
>
> Will tell you the paths that XEmacs knows about when started with
> '-q'. 

See attached below. They're both the same, and neither makes mention
of anything under ~/.xemacs.

> Why don't you just install Gnus to the default location?

For years, I was running an XEmacs in a location that I didn't have
write permission to, so I got in the habit of keeping my local
packages (including Gnus CVS builds) under my home directory. I chose
~/usr/local/ as the root to feed to the Gnus 'configure' script and it
came up with ~/usr/local/lib/xemacs/site-packages as the root for
Gnus.

> Or configure Gnus to install under ~/.xemacs/site-packages ?

Well, now I'd consider doing that, but I jumped in on this thread
because I didn't know about these special directories under ~/.xemacs
that would enable the autoload behavior. You explained how they're
supposed to work, and I've been trying to convince myself (and you in
the process) that these directories are not inspected with my current
Cygwin XEmacs 21.4.13. It's a good idea. I just wished it worked here.