biblio-lookup error
ericdanan opened this issue · comments
Whenever I call the function bibtex-lookup, it fails with the following error message:
run-hook-with-args: Symbol's function definition is void: biblio-hal-backend
It seems that emacs cannot find the function biblio-hal-backend, which is the first element in biblio-init-hook. If I remove it from the hook I get the same error with the next element, biblio-dblp-backend. If I call biblio-hal-lookup or biblio-dblp-lookup directly then everything works.
Since this issue has not been reported before, I guess I must be doing something wrong, but I can't find what... How is emacs supposed to find the functions biblio-****-backend, since they are not autoloaded?
Sorry to bother you with this, and thanks a lot for this package.
Hi @ericdanan,
Whenever I call the function
bibtex-lookup, it fails with the following error message:
Do you mean biblio-lookup?
Since this issue has not been reported before, I guess I must be doing something wrong, but I can't find what...
I think it's just that most people load this package aggressively (I do, because I wrote it :). But there is indeed a problem; thanks very much for spotting it! I'll push a fix soon.
Sorry to bother you with this, and thanks a lot for this package.
Thanks for the report!
New build should be out in a few hours; please let me know if it works!
Yes I meant biblio-lookup, sorry.
It works now, thanks! (I don't know if the new MELPA build is out already, I install the package with el-get).
Out of curiosity, what is the advantage of the two-stage mechanism to build the list of backends (first the autoloads to populate biblio-init-hook with the biblio-****-backend functions and then calling these functions to populate biblio-backends with these same functions, if I understand correctly)? Would it be different if instead the defvar for biblio-backends was directly setting the default value to the default list of biblio-****-backend functions?
Great, thanks for testing.
Re advantages: biblio-core and biblio are separate packages, so I can't refer to crossref-lookup etc. from biblio-core. Does this make sense?
You mean that some people may have the file biblio-core.el but not biblio-crossref.el, for instance, and the variable biblio-backends is automatically populated with the list of available backends. Right?
But I still don't understand the need for biblio-init-hook. If in biblio-crossref.el, instead of
;;;###autoload
(add-hook 'biblio-init-hook #'biblio-crossref-backend)
you had
;;;###autoload
(add-to-list 'biblio-backends #'biblio-crossref-backend)
and got rid of biblio-init-hook (and the 'register command in biblio-crossref-backend), would that make any difference?
Anyway, it all works fine, I'm just curious but I don't want to waste too much of your time.
Thanks
You mean that some people may have the file biblio-core.el but not biblio-crossref.el, for instance, and the variable biblio-backends is automatically populated with the list of available backends. Right?
That's right.
[If] you had
;;;###autoload
(add-to-list 'biblio-backends #'biblio-crossref-backend)and got rid of biblio-init-hook (and the 'register command in biblio-crossref-backend), would that make
any difference?
I'm not sure this would work. Would the variable exist when the autoloads are processed? Using add-hook instead of add-to-list works around this neatly because add-hook doesn't require the hook variable to already be defined.
OK I see the problem, biblio-backends would probably not exist at that point. Thanks a lot for the clarifications.
Exactly :) My pleasure, and thanks for the bug report!