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I'm trying to install go-mode in emacs (http://dominik.honnef.co/posts/2013/03/writing_go_in_emacs/) but am having trouble and I'm not sure if the problem is with my .emacs file or with the go-mode el. I've auto-generated go-mode-load.el as in http://www.pastebucket.com/58212.

I then configured my .emacs file as

(add-to-list 'load-path "/Users/<username>/Misc/emacs/go-mode.el/")
(require 'go-mode-load)

But when I start emacs I get the following error

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument stringp nil)
  expand-file-name(nil "/SourceCache/emacs/emacs-92/emacs/lisp")
  update-file-autoloads("go-mode.el")
  (let ((generated-autoload-file buffer-file-name)) (update-file-autoloads "go-mode.el"))
  eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*<2>> nil "/Users/ygreif/Misc/emacs/go-mode.el/go-mode-load.el" nil t)  ; Reading at buffer position 143
load-with-code-conversion("/Users/ygreif/Misc/emacs/go-mode.el/go-mode-load.el"     "/Users/ygreif/Misc/emacs/go-mode.el/go-mode-load.el" nil t)
require(go-mode-load)
eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*> nil "/Users/ygreif/.emacs" nil t)  ; Reading at buffer position 88
load-with-code-conversion("/Users/ygreif/.emacs" "/Users/ygreif/.emacs" t t)
load("~/.emacs" t t)
[globbily-bluck]
command-line()
normal-top-level()

How do I interpet the --debug-init. Is the problem in my .emacs file?

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You can read the output topdown. The latest elisp that is being evaluated is the line just after the error, in this case 

  expand-file-name(nil "/SourceCache/emacs/emacs-92/emacs/lisp")

A quick look at expand-file-name documentation reveals that the first argument is mandatory and must be a string containing a filename. Here you are somehow calling it with nil which is reflected in the error that says nil is not a string.

I took a quick look at go-mode from MELPA which points to the same github repository as source and could not find any file that provided go-mode-load as a feature. The only relavent lisp file was go-mode.el which can be loaded by (require 'go-mode). I strongly recommend installing from MELPA in this case.

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  • Awesome thanks. Do you know if MELPA works for emacs22? I tried copying the packages file repo.or.cz/w/emacs.git/blob_plain/… but loading it doesn't work
    – ygreif
    Oct 10, 2014 at 18:33
  • No, MELPA (and package.el in general) is for Emacs >= 23 only. It's probably unreasonable at this stage to expect that you can use modern code like go-mode with Emacs 22. Upgrading to 24.x, with its built-in package.el and many core enhancements, would be well worth the effort simply for the time saved dealing with issues like this.
    – sanityinc
    Oct 10, 2014 at 18:43
  • I should add that if you're using Emacs 22 because it is the default version on your Mac, you can easily grab a newer version from emacsformacosx.com as an app bundle. The bundle contains an Emacs executable which will also work from the command line.
    – sanityinc
    Oct 10, 2014 at 18:46
  • You can also install an up-to-date Emacs from Homebrew.
    – Sam Brightman
    Dec 23, 2014 at 6:46

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