[slime-devel] Re: Questions about latest slime (where did feature X go?)

[Helmut Eller]

* Jonathon McKitrick [2007-09-05 15:17+0200] writes:

> I'm new to elisp programming, but not to lisp itself.
> I currently have <f5> bound to 'slime, and that works well.  Would it make
> more sense to write my own elisp function that is bound to <f5> and
> in that function call (require 'slime) and (slime-setup) instead of
> calling it every time emacs starts?

The only problem I see with that approach, is that you may also need
some other commands, say slime-connect, and that would probably lead
to some duplication.

I'd load slime-autoloads, bind <f5> to 'slime, and call slime-setup in
.emacs.  Slime local key bindings for can be defined in
slime-mode-hook or slime-load-hook.

In ELisp you can use `autoload' to declare a function as autoloaded.
E.g. (autoload 'slime "slime" nil t) will automatically load
"slime.el[c]" when the function slime is called the first time.
[Loading the file will then install the proper function, and if the
file doesn't have a definition for it, Emacs complains with a somewhat
meaningful error message.]

The usual way to save startup time is to declare all needed functions
as autoloaded and to do customizations in hooks.  The file
slime-autoloads does just that.

slime-setup just sets some variables; it's cheap to execute.
slime-setup is also intended for newbies, so that they only need one
or two lines in their .emacs.  More experienced users will probably
add the necessary hooks "manually".

Helmut.