All *-autoloads.el FORM[0] fail with wrong-type-argument stringp nil: load-file-name is nil during package activation

[Kinneyzhang]

Bug Report: All *-autoloads.el FORM[0] fail with (wrong-type-argument stringp nil) on startup

Environment

• neomacs built from latest commit (macOS aarch64)
• Run command: RUST_LOG=info ./neomacs > launch.log

Description

During startup, neomacs fails to load every *-autoloads.el file with the same error:

!! popup-autoloads.el FORM[0] FAILED: ;;; popup-autoloads.el --- automatically extracted autoloads  -*- lexical-binding: t -*-
;;
;;; Code:

(add-to-list 'loa => (wrong-type-argument (stringp nil))

Error message: Error loading autoloads: (wrong-type-argument stringp nil)

Root Cause Analysis

Standard Emacs autoloads files begin with this form:

(add-to-list 'load-path (or (file-name-directory #$) (car load-path)))

Here #$ is the reader macro for load-file-name — the path of the file currently being loaded. In standard Emacs, this is bound to the filename during load/eval-buffer. In neomacs, #$ / load-file-name appears to be nil when autoloads files are loaded via package-activate-1, causing (file-name-directory nil) to signal (wrong-type-argument stringp nil).

Affected files (from log)

All *-autoloads.el in ~/.emacs.d/elpa/ fail, including:

• popup-autoloads.el
• pos-tip-autoloads.el
• chinese-word-at-point-autoloads.el
• names-autoloads.el
• youdao-dictionary-autoloads.el
• yasnippet-autoloads.el
• yaml-mode-autoloads.el
• which-key-autoloads.el
• use-package-autoloads.el
• ivy-autoloads.el
• slime-autoloads.el
• ... (all installed ELPA packages)

Call Stack (from log)

0: (eval-buffer #<buffer 158> nil "/Users/geekinney/.emacs.d/elpa/popup..." nil ...)
1: (load-with-code-conversion "/Users/geekinney/.emacs.d/elpa/popup..." ...)
2: (load "/Users/geekinney/.emacs.d/elpa/popup..." nil t)
3: (package-activate-1 #s(package-desc popup ...) ...)
4: (package-activate popup)
5: (package-activate-1 #s(package-desc youdao-dictionary ...) ...)
6: (package-activate youdao-dictionary)
7: (package--activate-all)
...
12: (package-activate-all)
13: (command-line)
14: (normal-top-level)

Expected Behavior

load-file-name (i.e. #$) should be bound to the absolute path of the file being loaded during load/load-with-code-conversion/eval-buffer, just as standard Emacs does. This allows (file-name-directory #$) in autoloads files to correctly return the package directory.

Suggested Fix

In neomacs's implementation of load / load-with-code-conversion / eval-buffer, ensure load-file-name is dynamically bound to the filename being loaded before evaluating forms. In standard Emacs C source (lread.c), Vload_file_name is set to the filename at the start of load_internal.

Impact

This causes all third-party ELPA packages to fail loading their autoloads, effectively breaking all user-installed packages at startup.