Can we force emacs to not load byte compiled files?

Question

I would like Emacs to not use byte-compiled files because the stack-trace is really messy.

So for my own elisp files, I can add ;; -*-no-byte-compile: t; -*- to disallow byte-compilation.

But how can I enforce this for the packages like evil downloaded from elpa, melpa etc?

Can I prevent package installation from byte-compiling so that there are no .elc's created in the first place?
If that is not possible, I could probably delete them, but would that not be recreated or is that automatically happening during the installation only?

The comment says that I can remove the load-path of .elc, but as far as I know, both .el and .elc is on the same path!

Is this a duplicate of https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/36846/package-el-how-can-i-avoid-byte-compilation? — Nishant, Jan 30 '18 at 21:25
No, that question is about avoiding/preventing compiling. This question seems to be about not loading existing *.elc files. But it's your question! So you tell us - is that question really what you want to ask? If so, delete this one. — Drew, Jan 30 '18 at 22:49
You can always delete byte-compiled files or move them out of your load-path (directly or indirectly). — Drew, Jan 30 '18 at 22:50
Possible duplicate of Does `load` prefer .elc files over .el files? — Yasushi Shoji, Jan 31 '18 at 03:32
@YasushiShoji: This is not a duplicate of that question either, AFAICT. — Drew, Jan 31 '18 at 15:01

Yasushi Shoji · Answer 1 · 2018-02-18T06:17:01.343

2

You can prevent package installation from byte-compiling. Write the following one liner in ~/.emacs.d/elpa/.dir-locals.el. This is described in package.el: How can I avoid byte-compilation

((emacs-lisp-mode . ((no-byte-compile . t))))

Or you can make Emacs to only load .el files, no .elc files. Write the following code in your .init.el. This is described in Does `load` prefer .elc files over .el files?

(setq load-suffixes '(".el"))

edited Feb 18 '18 at 06:17

answered Jan 31 '18 at 02:39

Yasushi Shoji

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Trying to achieve the same objective (don't load any byte-compiled LISP) in a different environment with straight.el as package manager. Both (setq load-suffixes '(".el")) or (setq load-suffixes '(".el" ".elc")) in my init.el result in the following error on startup: Eager macro-expansion failure: (error "Recursive load" "/usr/local/share/emacs/27.2/lisp/jka-compr.el.gz" ... ) [8 times] – lbo Feb 02 '23 at 09:56

Can we force emacs to not load byte compiled files?

1 Answers1