python-mode in emacs

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Svein Halvor Halvorsen wrote:

>Emacs doesn't seem to load files in /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp
>installed by ports. E.g python-mode installs files in this directory,
>but python-mode is not available in emacs afterwards. I have to manually
>tell emacs to look in these files.
>
>Are there any way to get emacs to automatically read files in this
>directory? Am I missing something? Shouldn't the ports system by default
>be setup in a way that this would work?
>
My emacs compiled out of ports does look in that directory by default.

In emacs do "ESC-x describe-variable load-path" which tells you where 
emacs is looking.  Mine is

("/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/site-lisp" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp" "/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/leim" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/toolbar" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/textmodes" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/progmodes" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/play" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/obsolete" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/net" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/mail" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/language" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/international" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/gnus" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/eshell" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/emulation" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/emacs-lisp" 
"/usr/local/share/emacs/21.3/lisp/calendar")

and as you can see second entry is "/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp"

Assuming it is missing for you, then you could add something like this 
to your .emacs

(set-variable 'load-path (append '("/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp") 
load-path))

but that sticks it at the end, so anything there won't override 
defaults, which is not so good.

Make sure you environment does not set EMACSLOADPATH which would 
override compile-time defaults.

hth,

--Alex