invalid-function: "help" & "convenience"

[novoid]

Hi!

On my Windows 7 machine (GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.1.7601)) I get invalid function error messages. However, with GNU/Linux it works.

What I did is I installed guide-key and its dependencies from MELPA yesterday. On Windows I did not alter my init.el (=main.el) yet but got invalid-function:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (invalid-function "help")
  "help"("convenience")
  byte-code("\300\301\302\303\304\305\306\307\310\311!&�\207" [define-package "guide-key" "20141130.1300" "Guide the following key bindings automatically and dynamically" ((popwin "0.3.0")) :url "https://github.com/kai2nenobu/guide-key" :keywords "help" "convenience"] 10)
  load("c:/Users/karl.voit/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/elpa/guide-key-20141130.1300/guide-key-pkg" nil t)
  package-load-descriptor("~/.emacs.d/elpa" "guide-key-20141130.1300")
  package-maybe-load-descriptor("guide-key" "20141130.1300" "~/.emacs.d/elpa")
  package-load-all-descriptors()
  package-initialize()
  eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*-753228> nil "c:/Users/karl.voit/.emacs.d/main.el" nil t)  ; Reading at buffer position 1666
  [...]

After removing guide-key melpa directory:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (invalid-function "convenience")
  "convenience"()
  byte-code("\300\301\302\303\304\305\306 &�\207" [define-package "popwin" "20141127.253" "Popup Window Manager." nil :keywords "convenience"] 7)
  load("c:/Users/karl.voit/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/elpa/popwin-20141127.253/popwin-pkg" nil t)
  package-load-descriptor("~/.emacs.d/elpa" "popwin-20141127.253")
  package-maybe-load-descriptor("popwin" "20141127.253" "~/.emacs.d/elpa")
  package-load-all-descriptors()
  package-initialize()
  eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*-759017> nil "c:/Users/karl.voit/.emacs.d/main.el" nil t)  ; Reading at buffer position 1666
  [...]

So with Windows, I had to remove the popwin directory as well.

With my very limited understanding of Elisp, I could not find out more.

[kai2nenobu]

At the release of Emacs 24.4, the format of archive-contents files, generated by package
repositories, has changed.

Because I didn't reproduce this issue even if I use Emacs 24.3.1, I think it is good to remove ~/.emacs.d/elpa directory and re-install all packages.

[novoid]

Hm, I guess this is not relevant to me since my GNU/Linux Emacs version is also 24.3(.50).