Re: simple loaded during startup

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:59:22 -0800
> 
> Doing 
> strace -o emacs.strace emacs -Q --no-site-file -nw
> and then
> grep simple emacs.strace
> 
> shows that "simple" is being loaded during startup. This seems strange
> given that "simple" should be in the dumped image... 
> If one deletes all traces of simple.el simple.elc simple.el.gz etc
> then emacs gives a "Wrong type argument: nil" error when starting up. 
> 
> Does anyone know if loading "simple" at startup is intentional?

Actually, Emacs doesn't _load_ simple.elc (put a breakpoint in Fload,
and you'll never see "simple" being loaded), it only locates it.  This
is because startup.el:command-line does this:

  ;; Convert preloaded file names to absolute.
  (let ((lisp-dir
         (file-truename
          (file-name-directory
           (locate-file "simple" load-path
                        (get-load-suffixes))))))

(Armed with lisp-dir, it then proceeds to convert relative file names
in load-history into absolute file names.)

IOW, we use simple.elc as an indicator where the Lisp files reside on
the file system, which is the value of lisp-dir computed in the above
snippet.

I don't see anything wrong with that.  Do you?