> similar issues with several important Org components (ol-* and ob-*). In > particular, ob-*.el packages affect Org simply by defining function > symbols with specific name patters (by ob-core.el design). > Achieving no side effects is difficult in practice.
That's true. It can be a balancing act. > Also, note that side effects are not uncommon in Elisp packages. > Including, built-ins, like rect.el. > dired+ comes to mind among popular third-party packages. Most of them are plain bugs, tho (typically fixed by introducing an autoloaded minor-mode, so the package is activated by enabling the minor mode rather than by `require`ing the package). > Like I said in another message that I sent just before receiving yours > my conclusion came from the fact that hitting 'C-h v' with the cursor > on 'org-goto-interface' provided nothing. It was the first time this > ever happened to me. I did try to explicitly enter the variable's > name by entering 'org-goto<TAB>', which (like 'org-go<TAB>') is not > enough: it is completed to 'org--goto'. AFAICT this is a missing feature: we obey `help-enable-autoload` in `describe-function` but we fail to do the same autoloading dance in `describe-variable`. Stefan