Symbol’s value as variable is void: org-evil-motion-mode

[zzantares]

Hi thank you for this wonderful package! I've been using it for quite a while without any issues till recently when this error started showing:

Error (use-package): org-evil/:catch: Symbol’s value as variable is void: org-evil-motion-mode

It might have something to do with latest Emacs since I updated quite around the same time:

GNU Emacs 28.1 (build 2, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.20, cairo version 1.16.0) of 2022-05-09

this is how I'm using it which used to work before:

(use-package org-evil
  :demand t)

what could be the problem here?

[matchcase]

I am facing the same issue

[Spauldo]

Workaround for me is to disable byte compilation using a .dir-locals.el file in org-evil's directory.

For me that's /home/spauldo/.emacs.d/elpa/org-evil-20210809.1724, but it might be different for you (especially if you're not named spauldo).

The contents of the file:
((emacs-lisp-mode . ((no-byte-compile . t))))

Then delete any .elc files in that directory and restart Emacs.

I'm guessing the actual fix will probably involve some kind of (eval-when-compile) construct, but that's not my area of expertise.

[ElleNajt]

Just a quick comment to add to Spauldo's - since it took me a minute to learn how to find the files :-) and then figure out how to get a .config that was reproducible without extra work.

1. You can run
   find . -name '*org-evil*.elc' inside of your .emacs.d to find the culprits
   and then
   find . -name '*org-evil*.elc' -delete to remove the files found that way.

For me (on doom emacs) they were all in .local/straight/build-29.1/org-evil/

2. I wanted to get my package manager to point towards my fork of org-evil, but I ended up just taking the functions I needed and loading them in my doom config, because I ran into this issue doom sync -u not overriding built in package with specified fork doomemacs/doomemacs#7235 trying to get the package manager to load from a fork. Permalink here: https://github.com/ElleNajt/emacs/blob/70deef3329c795389e4184ab1e27ce3994de9242/configs/orgmotions.el#L12 ( I suspect doing it this way is suboptimal, but it does work for giving me the functionality I want.)

[imiric]

I was also running into this issue. Thanks for the tip to disable byte compilation! Adding the .dir-locals.el file does indeed fix this.

But I wanted to have a set-it-and-forget-it solution, so with some help from Claude, this works for me:

(use-package org-evil
  :ensure t
  :after org
  :init
  ;; Remove existing .elc files and prevent future compilation
  ;; Fix for "Symbol’s value as variable is void: org-evil-motion-mode"
  ;; See https://github.com/GuiltyDolphin/org-evil/issues/24
  (with-eval-after-load 'org-evil
    (let ((org-evil-dir (file-name-directory (locate-library "org-evil"))))
      (when org-evil-dir
        ;; Remove existing .elc files
        (dolist (elc-file (directory-files org-evil-dir t "\\.elc$"))
          (delete-file elc-file))
        ;; Advise package.el functions to prevent recompilation
        (advice-add 'package--compile :around
                    (lambda (orig-fun &rest args)
                      (unless (string-prefix-p org-evil-dir (car args))
                        (apply orig-fun args))))))))

It would be great to have a proper fix for this, though.

Another solution if you use straight.el might be:

(use-package org-evil
  :straight (:no-byte-compile t)
  :after org)

But I abandoned that after it downloaded Org from Git instead of using the built-in version, and even after telling it to use the built-in one, I still got the variable is void issue... So 🤷