Installed packages may not get their Info files properly installed

[treese]

In Aquamacs 3.6, a user reports that the info file for ELPA org-mode installation don't show up properly.

This could be a bug in Aquamacs, or it might be something that has changed with the package installation since Emacs 25. Either way, check in for Aquamacs 4.

[rpgoldman]

I have just looked, and when I install org-mode from elpa there is a dir file in the elpa/org-9.5.2/ directory, which indicates that info files should be added to the info directory search list in some way.

When I look at the value of Info-directory-list, I see one elpa package there: "/Users/rpg/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Packages/elpa/bnf-mode-20200323.1348" for a package that I have just installed.

When I restart Aquamacs, though, this variable is nil. When I first open the Info docs, it gets populated. At this point there are no elements of ``"/Users/rpg/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Packages/"` in this list.

This suggests to me that somehow the updates to Info-default-directory-list are not getting persisted, or somehow are getting clobbered in initialization.

When I start Aquamacs without customizations, I get this as my Info-directory-list:

("/Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/aquamacs/edit-modes/info" "/Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/Resources/info" "/Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/Resources/info/" "/usr/local/share/info/" "/usr/share/info/")

So it's not my personal customizations that are doing this. Somehow the packages directories are being lost.

A separate issue is that the org info file, which should be in Packages/elpa/org-9.5.2/ and named simply org is not there, although the README_ELPA file says it should be. Actually the README_ELPA file contradicts the dir file, which indicates that both org and orgguide.

This suggests to me that there are in fact two bugs here:

1. Installation of elpa packages does not work properly. The initial effect, as indicated above by the contents of Info-directory-list in Aquamacs after bnf-mode install, is correct. But the contents of Info-directory-list in Aquamacs after restarting show that the effects on info's search are not persisted properly.
2. Something may be wrong in the packaging of org-mode for ELPA. If so, this is likely to be an upstream issue.

[rpgoldman]

Further according to the multi-file package docs:

If the content directory contains a file named dir, this is assumed to be an Info directory file made with install-info. See Invoking install-info in Texinfo. The relevant Info files should also be present in the content directory. In this case, Emacs will automatically add the content directory to Info-directory-list when the package is activated.

That suggests that I should have the org-mode docs in my Info-directory-list, because I have org-mode running, but I don't. Opening a BNF file loads bnf-mode, but also does not push the package directory onto Info-directory-list.

It's not entirely clear to me what "activated" means in the docs. Looking at package.el maybe it means "installed," rather than "run."

This seems to be the place where the package's documentation should be loaded:

aquamacs-emacs/lisp/emacs-lisp/package.el

Lines 701 to 705 in 7af9e2a

	(when (file-exists-p (expand-file-name "dir" pkg-dir))
	;; FIXME: not the friendliest, but simple.
	(require 'info)
	(info-initialize)
	(push pkg-dir Info-directory-list))

What I don't see is any discussion of how the effect on Info-directory-list is persisted.

The only thing I can think of is that the code for initializing the Info directory is expected somehow to stumble over the dir files, but that somehow this doesn't happen in Aquamacs, perhaps because the package directories are in ~/Library?

Anyway, that's what I was able to dope out

[treese]

Thanks--that's some helpful background for debugging this later.