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To: XEmacs Developers <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>
Subject: Re: Suggestion: instllation of lisp files
References: <199709141922.PAA19576@helene.tele.nokia.fi>
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From: Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr>
Date: 15 Sep 1997 16:06:44 +0200
In-Reply-To: Jari Aalto's message of "Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:22:09 -0400"
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Jari Aalto <jaalto@tre.tele.nokia.fi> writes:

>         But, it is not okay from the user's point of view. First, it
>         cause XEmacs laod-path to be really big. The impact is slow
>         search time when some package has to be loaded: every subdir
>         must be checked in the order or dirs in load-path.

That's what I thought, too.  But this proves not to be the case.  True 
enough, the search takes a long time the *first* time.  However, the
`locate-file' routine (used internally to locate the Lisp files)
creates hash-tables of directory contents.  So, searching for a
package is slow the first time around, but not for the second time.

As for size, subdirs only serve to make XEmacs directory listings
smaller, not bigger.  The size overhead of having a few directories
lying around is negligable when compared to the inconvenience of
having to deal with one huge directory with hundreds of files.

>         directorory which would simply include softlinks to every package
>         in XEmacs lisp tree. This way there would be one, single, directory
>         which could be put to load-path (Just like in Emacs; no more search
>         penalty)

GNU Emacs 20 has multiple Lisp directories, too.

-- 
Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> | Student at FER Zagreb, Croatia
--------------------------------+--------------------------------
4.  Thou shalt not warlorde a sig if it bee the sig of Kibo, nor if
    it bee the sig of the Inner Circle.

