[no subject]

[KMP at MIT-MC (Kent M. Pitman)]

If I have a function FUN which is defined in file BAR but requires the
FOO file environment preloaded in order to win, then I can't make FUN
autoload. I would like to be able to say
 (DEFPROP FUN ((DSK WHATEVER) BAR FASL) AUTOLOAD)
in the FOO file (after setting up appropriate environment). But if
I have initially done 
 (DEFPROP FUN ((DSK WHATEVER) FOO FASL) AUTOLOAD)
I get FUN undefined after autoload. The ability to have the autoload
guy keep a list of the TRUENAMEs it has tried stopping after it hits a
loop (or I surely wouldn't care if it looped forever if I was dumb enuf
to make the thing circular ... it's no worse than typing (PROG A (GO A))
and Lisp doesn't try to diagnose that) -- in any case, having Lisp look
to see if the new autoload property is the same file (or maybe has same
truename) as the previous file and if not, then retry the autoload
would be very useful to me in some circumstances with my Fortran stuff
which requires an environment setup beforehand. The setup is sufficiently
expensive that doing it if I am not ever going to call the functions is
not worthwhile, so I lose either the storage used by the setup or the
ability to have translated routines autoload ... Certainly enough goes on
in an autoload that the extra little check in the case of an undefined 
function after autoload would not be noticed by anyone...? -kmp