[slime-devel] M-. can't find definitions

[Helmut Eller]

* Peter Keller [2011-03-24 00:43] writes:

> Hello,
>
> I'm a relatively new emacs and SLIME (for lisp) user. I have set up a
> checked out version (as of a day ago) of SLIME in my emacs and it seems
> to be working well.
>
> However, whenever I use M-. to go to the definition of anything, I get:
>
> "No known definition for: <thing-at-point> (in <package-name>)"
>
> in the minibuffer.
>
> How can I fix this? I don't understand what I have to do to make this work.

M-. takes a symbol, fetches the corresponding function and looks into
the debug info of that function.  The debug info usually contains the
source file and position in some implementation specific format.
Finding the source location of classes or variables works a bit
differently but the idea is the same: the compiler has to record the
source location somewhere.  If you use an implementation that doesn't
record source locations (e.g. CLisp) or if the debug info is stripped
(as in Allegro) then M-. will not work well.

If you use an implementation like CCL/SBCL/CMUCL then it should work,
at least for compiled functions and those loaded from fasl files.

I can't give a better answer unless you provide enough details to
reproduce your problem.

Helmut