byte compiling

["James R. Van Zandt" <jrv@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dr. Raman -

Your Makefile runs Emacs separately to byte compile each elisp file.
I have found that several other Debian packages use a different method
of byte-compiling Emacs add-ons: They run Emacs once and byte compile
all the files.  I have adapted the latter method to Emacspeak, using
approximately the following commands:

FLAGS="-q -batch -l path.el -l emacspeak-load-path.el -f batch-byte-compile"
FILES=`echo *.el`
cat << EOF > path.el
(setq load-path (cons "." load-path) byte-compile-warnings nil)
EOF
emacs ${FLAGS} ${FILES}

This appears to offer several advantages:
  It runs in about half the time.  
  It generates about one third of the output.  
  It does not generate warnings about symbols not known to be defined. 

Is there some disadvantage to byte compiling this way?  Otherwise, you
might consider setting the Makefile up this way.

For reference, I believe these are the relevant lines from the Makefile:

BATCH = -batch -q -no-site-file
COMPILE = -eval "(setq byte-compile-dynamic t)" -f batch-byte-compile

%.elc:  %.el
	$(EMACS) $(BATCH) -l $(CWD)/emacspeak-load-path $(COMPILE) $(CWD)/$<

			   - Jim Van Zandt

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