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I read from some posts (require vs. package-initialize?, and here) that Emacs can autoload packages installed via ELPA/MELPA, which avoids using require on packages and speeds up loading during initialization. And quoting this answer:

Note that for 99% of the packages require should not be needed (the autoloads should cause the package to be loaded as soon as you try to make use of it).

I do have quite a few usages of (require ...) in my init.el that significantly slow down emacs initialization. By turning things on and off, some culprits seems to be

(require 'help-fns+)   ; about 0.2 to 0.3 s
(require 'org)
(require 'ob-octave)   ; not sure, but up to 1 s

I tried to just comment out these require statements (since I use emacs 27.1 under Ubuntu). But help-fns+.el does not seem to work anymore. Functions defined there (e.g. describe-buffer) can no longer be found.

My questions are:

Is it the right way to take advantage of autoloads by just removing the require call? Or is it because help-fns+.el doesn't have the autoload capability from ELPA?

If the latter case, (how) can I autoload help-fns+.el and avoid a hard require in init.el?

Drew
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tinlyx
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    Do `C-h i g (elisp)Autoload` - ELPA packages may be using it, but it has nothing to do with ELPA per se. – NickD Jun 12 '21 at 15:21

1 Answers1

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There are some alternatives. Do any of them after putting the library in a directory that's in your load-path.

  1. Unconditionally load the library.

    (require 'help-fns+)

  2. Autoload the library for individual commands (or other functions, but typically commands), by putting a sexp like this in your init file:

    (autoload 'describe-command "help-fns+" "Help commands." t)

    Then, whenever you invoke that command, the file will automatically be loaded.

  3. But library help-fns+.el also provides ;;;###autoload cookies, so you can alternatively generate a file of autoloads for it, using command update-file-autoloads.

As @NickD wrote in a comment, see the Elisp manual, node Autoload.

Drew
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