Scripted bookmark jump not working after startup

Question

1. Add the following to .spacemacs:

      (defun my-bookmark-set (char)
        (interactive "cPlease enter a bookmark name to set: ")
        (bookmark-set (char-to-string char)))

      (defun my-bookmark-jump (char)
        (interactive "cPlease enter a bookmark name to jump to: ")
        (bookmark-jump (char-to-string char)))

      (define-key evil-normal-state-map (kbd "'") 'my-bookmark-jump)
      (define-key evil-normal-state-map (kbd "m") 'my-bookmark-set)

2. Set a bookmark a with C-x r m a or ma, and quit and restart emacs

3. Navigation to bookmark a fails with "Invalid bookmark a" displayed

'a

4. Navigation to bookmark a succeeds

C-x r b a

5. Move cursor to another location

6. Navigation to bookmark a succeeds

'a 

Why does the action at step 3. fail, when at step 6. and subsequently it succeeds?

Answer 1

Your problem is that bookmark-jump doesn't load the bookmark file, and until that happens your bookmark is unknown.

If you check the interactive declaration for that function, you'll see that it uses bookmark-completing-read which in turn calls bookmark-maybe-load-default-file which is what you also need to do if you're not going to use the same method of reading the bookmark name.

(defun my-bookmark-jump (char)
  "Jump to bookmark CHAR."
  (interactive "cPlease enter a bookmark name to jump to: ")
  (require 'bookmark)
  (bookmark-maybe-load-default-file)
  (bookmark-jump (char-to-string char)))

Answer 2

It's not clear what error you're getting, and when. First you say that you get an Invalid bookmark error, without providing a recipe. Then you provide a recipe, I think, for the void-function-definition error. What's the real problem/question?

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Anyway, ignoring the invalid-bookmark problem, do you see the same void-function-definition problem if you start Emacs using emacs -Q (no init file)? If not, bisect your init file to find the culprit.

If you do see the same thing, do M-x debug-on-entry my-bookmark-jump and show the Backtrace you get when you invoke my-bookmark-jump.