Bug#1139706: elpa-with-editor: Using emacs as $EDITOR brings up "definition is void" error

Xiyue Deng <[email protected]> Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:15:52 -0700

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.emacsen
Message-ID	<87h5n8bj1j.fsf__22051.4197064162$1781230648$gmane$org@debian-hx90.lan>

Xiyue Deng <[email protected]> writes:

> Hi Ron,
>
> Ron Murray <[email protected]> writes:
>
>> Package: elpa-with-editor
>> Version: 3.5.1-1
>> Severity: important
>>
>> Dear Maintainer,
>>
>> I use emacs as $EDITOR, and ran tripwire on my system this
>> morning. When tripwire finished, emacs came up with a "definition is
>> void" error.
>>
>> I'd had a similar problem yesterday (see bug #1139671), so I knew
>> what to look for. I found an empty "with-editor.elc" file in
>> /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/elpa/with-editor-3.5.1, so I renamed it to
>> ".bad", and that fixed the problem.
>>
>
> Thanks for reporting the issue and finding the cause. An empty .elc can
> mean that the byte compilation of the file failed. I don't see this on
> my system though. Can you show the content of the install log
> (/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/elpa/Install.log.gz) which may have some

Apparently I missed the package part in the path.  This should be:

/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/elpa/with-editor-3.5.1/Install.log.gz

> clue of what could have gone wrong?
>
>> -- System Information:
>> Debian Release: forky/sid
>>   APT prefers testing
>>   APT policy: (500, 'testing')
>> Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
>> Foreign Architectures: i386
>>
>> Kernel: Linux 7.0.12.khufu (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
>> Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE
>> Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
>> Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
>> Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
>> LSM: AppArmor: enabled
>>
>> Versions of packages elpa-with-editor depends on:
>> ii  dh-elpa-helper              2.1.9
>> ii  elpa-compat                 31.0.0.1+dfsg-1
>> ii  elpa-cond-let               1.1.2-1
>> ii  emacs-common [elpa-compat]  1:30.2+1-3
>> ii  emacsen-common              3.0.8
>>
>> elpa-with-editor recommends no packages.
>>
>> Versions of packages elpa-with-editor suggests:
>> pn  elpa-vterm  <none>
>>
>> -- no debconf information
>>

-- 
Regards,
Xiyue Deng

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